To further promote water safety, learners from disadvantaged communities participated in eThekwini's Municipality’s Learn to Swim Programme.
1,500 people.
That is the staggering number of lives lost to drowning each year in South Africa, according to the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), Swimming South Africa, and eThekwini Municipality.
In a bid to mark World Drowning Prevention Day on Saturday, the municipality partnered with lifesaving organisations to host an interactive water safety programme at the Rachel Finlayson Swimming Pool in Durban, where learners, community members, emergency services personnel and lifeguards took part in rescue demonstrations and water safety education.
As South Africa marks the awareness day on Saturday, water safety experts and municipalities are renewing calls for greater awareness, warning that the country's deadliest drowning hotspots are not its beaches, but its rivers and other inland waterways.
