Seven girls drown in lake in southwestern Cambodia: police

[geovalin]

 

Source:Xinhua

 

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Seven young girls drowned while playing waters in a lake in southwestern Cambodia's Preah Sihanouk Province on Tuesday morning, a provincial police official told Xinhua. Major General Chuon Narin, police chief of the province, said a group of nine local children went to play waters but two of them did not get down.

"All seven girls, who bathed in the lake, died of drowning," he told Xinhua via telephone, adding that the victims aged between eight and 13 years old. According to Narin, the lake was a bit far from a nearby village, and there was no adult over there when the accident occurred.

Drownings happen very often in Cambodia, particularly in rural areas, where parents or legal guardians are busy with their farming work and leave their small children at home alone. On Feb. 7, three children, aged between four and six years old, drowned in a pond in central Kampong Thom Province when their parents were at work.

 

source http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1035223.shtml

[phantomfiddler]

So sad. Children should be taught to swim as part of the school system, since it is probably the most important single thing that a person can learn !

[bluebluewater]

9 minutes ago, phantomfiddler said:

So sad. Children should be taught to swim as part of the school system, since it is probably the most important single thing that a person can learn !

Learning to swim is the most important single thing a person can learn?  You sure?  Somehow I don't think so.

 

What if the children can't afford to go to school as is often the case in Cambodia?

 

A very bad deal in any event . . . 

[Kabula]

Parents should be  responsible and teach or have someone teach their young children how to swim. It is so important especially with all the canals, the sea, and  flooding in Cambodia.   Young children are always attracted to water. 

[Beats56]

MY tgf and all her family can swim with no lessons me too. But this been one of my soap boxes for awhile. Get all schools to teach swimming like Japan. It will save a lot of lives. So preventable. Where were the parents when these young girls went in the water? 

[jschorr]

According to the World health Organization, drowning is the leading cause of death for children in most SE Asian countries.  In Thailand, 1300-1500 children die each year from drowning. The Chiang Mai International Rotary Club is working to reduce the number of these tragic deaths.  This past year we worked with the Chiang Mai public schools and Kru Payu Swim to teach survival swimming and water safety to 400 public school 4th-graders in Chiang Mai.  We are hoping to expand our program to other parts of Thailand working through the Rotary network and with other service organizations. If you have some ideas or want to help, please contact me at [email protected]. We especially need sponsorships, in Chiang Mai we can provide a child with swim equipment, towels, 5 hours of pool-side water safety instruction, and 10 hours of in pool swim instruction for less than 500 Baht/child.  We trained 400 kids in the past 12 months, using an adaptation of the proven Australian Royal Life Saving curriculum.  We'd  be happy to share our experiences with others who want establish drowning prevention programs anywhere in our region; so many of these tragic deaths are preventable!

[jak2002003]

Its very strange that children here are not taught how to swim.. by their parents or school.

 

Mind you, it seem that children are not considered very important here... with all the murders, beating, sexual molestation etc.. and the offenders getting virtually no punishment.

 

It also seems weird that kids have no understanding of water.  Many time I have seem older children jumping into a swimming pool in the deep end laughing and joking... only to see them sink to the bottom and have to be fished out..... then they say they don't know how to swim.... how can they have no fear or common sense about the water and just dive in when hey have never learnt to swim?!!!

 

 

[jschorr]

11 hours ago, jak2002003 said:

Its very strange that children here are not taught how to swim.. by their parents or school.

 

Mind you, it seem that children are not considered very important here... with all the murders, beating, sexual molestation etc.. and the offenders getting virtually no punishment.

 

It also seems weird that kids have no understanding of water.  Many time I have seem older children jumping into a swimming pool in the deep end laughing and joking... only to see them sink to the bottom and have to be fished out..... then they say they don't know how to swim.... how can they have no fear or common sense about the water and just dive in when hey have never learnt to swim?!!!

 

 

Most parents do not know how to swim.  Add to that the lack of money, time, facilities, instructors, and lack of understanding of the dangers in every region of Thailand, and I think that explains why children are not taught to swim.  I agree with you that schools should take this on as one of their responsibilities, and that's why we have focused our program here in Chiang Mai on public school 4th graders.  We hope this program can be used as a prototype for other school districts, and we are working on ways to spread the word.