The Punjab Emergency Service (PES) Rescue 1122 officials revealed that at least 599 people lost their lives in 1,046 drowning incidents across the province since the beginning of the year.
The information was stated during a meeting held at the Rescue Headquarters in Thokar Niaz Beg on Tuesday.
The meeting was presided over by PES Director General (DG) Dr Rizwan Naseer and was attended by the Head of Operations Ayaz Aslam, Head of Community Safety and Information Deeba Shahnaz, Spokesperson Farooq Ahmad, and Provincial Monitoring Cell Emergency Officer Imran Ahmad.
It was observed by the meeting that a majority of these drowning emergencies, 62%, were associated with canals.
Nearly 20% of these were related to rivers, 12.8% occurred in ponds and wells and the rest of the 5.2% drowning emergencies were related to sewerage and drains.
As per details, the most amount of emergencies occurred in the provincial capital. PES responded to a total of 63 drowning emergencies in Lahore between January and August.
The PES DG said that this trend of increasing number of drowning emergencies in Lahore shows that people do not have access to safe and dedicated places for swimming activities.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 19th, 2020.
1732538123-0/BeFunky-collage-(90)1732538123-0-165x106.webp "article")
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ