THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Roughly, 15 per cent of all deaths that happen in the state are due to drowning, as per the State Crime Records Bureau statistics. And not a week passes without the death of a schoolgoer or a youth in river-rich Kerala. Incidentally, the state government’s much-hyped ‘swim and survive’ programme to equip such children to take life-saving stokes in future has reached only a negligible number of beneficiaries. Now, projects that make use of portable pools to train children in schools have run into troubled waters in all districts due to paucity of funds.
The programme exists on paper in Muthukulam school at Alappuzha, Chottanikkara government school, Erumapatti in Thrissur, Vandoor school in Malappuram and Madapilly school in Kozhikode.
The project was close to a grand success at St Mary’s, Pattom, the largest school in the state in terms of student strength. However, it was wound up abruptly a year ago. Some others in the capital city like SMV and Model school wound up the project months after it began in 2012. The use of pools has been intermittent in the rest of the state due to lack of funds.
“The project went smoothly for a year because the water change and maintenance were overseen by the government and water changes were made by tankers. Though the government quit we ran it for two more years until 2015 but it’s too expensive to run. Children were charged around '300 per head and instructors had to be paid with this,” said St Mary’s vice-principal Father Nelson Valiyaveettil.
Sports and Youth Affairs additional secretary S. Najumudeen said that the project would be revamped and be launched in new schools. Officials claim that the government had to annually invest Rs 20 lakh in each of around a dozen schools to run the project with the assistance from an NGO, Rashtriya Life Saving society, Pune.
“Close to 1,500 students can take swimming lessons using one pool within a period of 20 days. Since most schools will not have the requisite number of aspirants for swimming lessons after a few months, the pools have to be shifted. However, pool shifting doesn’t happen,” said a trainer pointing at the lack of will to run the project.
