There have been numerous incidents of children drowning in home swimming pools in recent months, and others have been exposed to similar incidents while they were with their families while spending vacations in tourist resorts or on beaches. Meanwhile, government officials, parliamentarians, and swimming training experts stressed the need to take measures to ensure that these incidents are not repeated. Accidents, describing these pools as an “attractive danger” to children, especially those who cannot swim in the absence of supervision from their families.
There is no federal data available on the number of incidents of children drowning in home swimming pools, or in hotels and parks, but local media published news about a number of similar incidents in recent months confirming their recurrence.
Member of the Health and Environmental Affairs Committee in the Federal National Council, Khalid Ali bin Zayed Al Falasi, said that there are three basic steps to avoid tragic accidents for children in swimming pools. The first is to increase families’ awareness of the precautions they must take to protect their children from drowning, such as placing a fence around the pool. They are trained to swim under the supervision of a professional coach. The third is to provide swimming pools with life jackets and covers to prevent children from falling into them.
He stressed the need to warn children about the danger of taking friends to the pool in the absence of a supervisor or lifeguard, calling for the adoption of awareness campaigns for families at the state level, warning against leaving children with domestic workers, who in most cases cannot swim.
Child Protection Law
The head of the Education, Culture and Youth Committee in the Federal National Council, Naima Abdullah Al-Sharhan, called for setting requirements for home swimming pools to ensure that children’s lives are not risked, such as insulating them with protective walls, provided that there is a door to enter and exit them, which the child cannot use.
Educating families
As for Federal National Council member and member of the Human Rights Committee, Afra Rashid Al-Basti, she stressed the need to make more efforts to educate families about the dangers of children falling into swimming pools, describing attention to the aesthetic appearance of the swimming pool at the expense of security and safety requirements as negligence.
She pointed out that “children who lose their lives due to family neglect place their families under the penalty of the law, according to the recently issued Child Protection Law.”
She said, “The family must do everything in its power to care for its children, and educate its members about the danger of going into a swimming pool without the necessary safety measures,” pointing out that “the Child Protection Law exposes parents to penalties if one of their children drowns in swimming pools inside the home.”
Swimming pools for children
Swimming training expert, Ahmed Ajami, determined the time period required for a child to survive when he falls into the pool, as not exceeding a few seconds, due to water entering the respiratory system, pointing out “the necessity of allocating a shallow area in swimming pools for children whose depth does not exceed 50 centimeters, or up to the middle of the child’s body.”
He added, “Most building swimming pools allocate graduated depths starting from 30 centimeters and increasing until they reach 180 centimeters, but there are buildings that create pools with a single depth (160 centimeters in most cases), which is extremely dangerous for children, and in this case a lifeguard should be allocated to the pool.”
The swimming pool installation contractor in Dubai, Engineer Walid Ramadan, confirms that responsibility for this aspect falls on the municipalities, in terms of the shape of the pool, its depth, and its security and safety elements. But it does not absolve villa owners from responsibility for this type of accident.
He explained, “Some people underestimate safety and security requirements, especially if they do not have young children, while I notice great interest from those who have young children at home. But they forget that the neighbors’ children could be at risk of drowning in this pool.”
He said, “Some people ask for life jackets to be prepared, or for the pool to be placed in a closed glass room. There is a type of customer who prefers to surround the pool with an aluminum fence that is taller than the child, and others who prefer to cover the pool with a plastic material similar to a car hood.”
Despite the safety requirements mentioned by Ramadan, there is a technical audit conducted on the swimming pools before handing them over to the owners of buildings and villas, which is carried out by the municipalities, he says.
Ramadan explains, “The municipality requests security and safety systems from the real estate developer, who in turn requests them from the implementation contractor, and if those wishing to build a swimming pool adhere to them, this will reduce the possibility of drowning incidents.”
4 means of protection
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Most used The areas and depths of swimming pools vary in villas and buildings, while spaces between 8 and 10 meters in length versus four or five meters in width remain the most commonly used. Depths range between one meter and 120, 140, and 160 centimetres, as depths widely used locally. |
The security and safety expert at a swimming pool installation company, Khaled Suleiman, identified four protection and safety measures that can be followed to prevent children from drowning in swimming pools, saying that there is a watch worn by the child that gives an audio warning as soon as he enters the pool. There are also aluminum sensors placed around the swimming pool to remotely sense and warn of danger, and there is a plastic net covering the pool (relatively cheap). Finally, qualified home workers can be hired to handle swimming pools.
He said, “There are three main questions that the technician asks when he inspects the location of the swimming pool. The first is: Does the family have young children? What is the required size and depth, and what method does the homeowner want to (finish) the pool? Will it be a closed or open swimming pool?”, considering that “the answer to these questions resolves the issue of safety for children.”
Lootah: Strict controls for swimming pool licenses
The Director General of Dubai Municipality, Engineer Hussein Nasser Lootah, stated that “construction licenses for swimming pools vary from one place to another, whether one building, a villa, a park, or a hotel building.” He added: “We set strict controls for licensing the most popular swimming pools, the most important of which is the presence of permanent lifeguards.” He stressed that “the municipality monitors swimming pools in terms of health requirements, security and safety reasons, while swimming pools in homes are subject to the direct supervision of families, and they are responsible for monitoring them,” pointing out that “the matter is more related to social awareness than to licenses.”
He continued, “The situation does not constitute a phenomenon that requires changing the currently applied regulations. What is needed is more public awareness of the dangers of leaving children near swimming pools.”
Swimming pools are subject to municipalities
The Director General of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (Specifications), Engineer Abdullah Al-Muaini, said, “Home swimming pools are subject, in terms of their shapes, depths, and decorations, to the building departments in municipalities, which must ensure that safety requirements are met, while the authority monitors the equipment and materials.” used, such as sterilization materials, lighting lamps, etc.
He continued, “What is important to the Authority is that the lighting lamps do not cause electrical contact with the water, because that is enough to electrocute those inside the pool,” pointing to “the development of a federal specification for waterproof lamps, and a specification for insulating materials used in building and operating the pool.”
Al-Muaini confirmed that no death due to an electrical short circuit in a swimming pool has been recorded since the approval of the two specifications, placing the blame on families whose negligence causes drowning accidents for one of their children, pointing out that “the cause of most of the drowning accidents that we observed was not a technical defect in the installation of the pool, but rather “It was a defect in the awareness of the family itself.”
He stressed that “the authority will study adding any other specification that enhances safety requirements, and it will also examine, in cooperation with municipalities in the country, whether there are any additional measures that can be applied and circulated to protect the lives of children, by reviewing the (unified building code) currently applied.”