The number of drowning instances in agricultural estates has increased due to the enormous number of children and young people who have come to these estates in recent weeks due to Morocco’s extreme heat.
MoroccoLatestNews AR sources indicated that many children and adolescents drowned in these water tanks that were not suitable for swimming, which mobilized the local authorities, who intensified the monitoring operations in such agricultural estates.
The absence of public swimming pools in rural communities led to the demand of young people for tanks placed in agricultural estates, which posed a threat to their lives, as it was not suitable for swimming in the first place.
As a result, civil society activists following the case urged public officials to fence off these water tanks while also educating parents on the importance of monitoring their children and warning them against swimming in these agricultural places.
Plastic water tanks frequently reach depths of at least five meters, and the slick plastic material that shuts the sides of the tank adds to children drowning.
Local authorities, in collaboration with local communities and civil protection services, have conducted a variety of awareness programs in rural regions over the last two months to raise awareness of the dangers of swimming in dam lakes and water tanks.
Abdelwahed Zeyat, head of the Moroccan Network for the Civil Alliance for Youth, said, “These water tanks really pose a great danger to the people of the rural world, which requires fencing the estates that they’re available on them to avoid swimming in them.”
Zeyat added, in a statement to MoroccoLatestNews AR that “the depth of the problem does not really lie in avoiding access to plastic tanks, but is evident in the absence of public swimming pools at the lowest cost for families with limited incomes.”
The civil actor explained that children go to water tanks because there are no free public swimming pools, especially since rural and mountainous families do not have the capabilities to send their children to proper swimming pools.
The recurring issue of swimming pools raises questions on the reality of social development in villages, for which the government must allocate an ambitious program to construct the required public facilities, explained Zeyat.
He emphasized that rural development funds were only allocated to agricultural issues, and ignored other social and developmental aspects related to children and the population.