The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) has indicated that authorities at various basic schools across the country must make swimming a compulsory subject to reduce Pupils drowning any time there is heavy rains in some parts of Ghana.
Their comment come on the wake of school children under 10 who get drowned with the recent one involving a six-year-old twin girl at Moshie Zongo, a suburb of the Kumasi metropolis on Monday evening following a torrential downpour that lasted about 30 minutes.
According to Nsenkyire “on her way home from school, was swept off her feet by floodwaters, resulting in a huge fall that landed her on a sharp metal, leaving a deep cut on her head; it is suspected that she died from the profuse bleeding”, he told Kumasi-based Angel FM on Tuesday.
“It is sad the way children are being swept away by floodwaters in the Ashanti region in recent times; as at this morning, twelve children have died in floods and it is high time we taught kids how to swim in school; it is very important that we take this step”, he said.
He laid all the blame on the “negligence of parents, especially fathers who care less about how and when their children get to school, leaving the responsibility of care entirely on mothers”.
Some residents of Kumasi has been displayed by the October rains with some dying while properties running into millions of cedis lost.