Mumbai:
When an 11-year-old student who was participating in an inter-school swimming meet struggled to complete the lap, an 'alert' life-guard jumped into the pool to his rescue. But the irony was that the life-guard who jumped in was not a trained life-guard at all, and in fact, he himself did not know proper swimming.
Eventually, the struggling student not only managed to swim to safety, but also managed to save the lifeguard who latched onto him.
The incident occurred at the Navi Mumbai Sports Association (NMSA) swimming pool on Friday during Navi Mumbai Area School Association's (NMASA) swimming meet. "The carelessness could have cost two lives," said a Nerul school's sports teacher, adding that the incident was all the more shocking considering that it happened in full view of expert swimmers and trainers, but nobody took any action to rescue the duo.
Apparently, a trained lifeguard was not available on the deck and a housekeeping boy was made to sit on the lifeguard's chair at one end of the deck.
"Since the person was sitting on the lifeguard's chair, everyone assumed that he must be the lifeguard and so told him to jump in. When we realized that even he doesn't know swimming, we enquired why the lifeguard is not trained. We were told that he is not a lifeguard but a housekeeping person," the teacher said.
The organizers claim that no one drowns at inter-school meets and the presence of a lifeguard is merely a formality. "NMSA assured us that there are two lifeguards on the deck and we didn't recheck whether they are qualified or not as we believed in the club," NMASA sports co-ordinator Purushotham Poojary said. When contacted, NMSA vice-president Dr Dilip Rane said, "We have two trained lifeguards. If the child didn't know swimming, why was he permitted to participate."
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