City pools declared unsafe by experts

Rachna Khaira

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 25

Swimming pools across the city have been declared unsafe by the health experts as majority of the them are being run in open areas by various clubs, hotels and even schools during monsoon season causing lot of water-borne infections amongst people especially children.

Dr Tarlochan Singh Randhawa, leading pediatrician in the city, said majority of the pools do not even have adequate filtration equipments to complete the mandatory water circulation process requires to clean the entire pool water.

“Most of the children coming to hospital with various water-borne infections are regular swimmers at these pools. The symptoms include high fever, shivering, throat, skin and abdominal infection. Even some children have reported fever as high as 104 degrees and have stopped responding to the antibiotics,” said Dr Randhawa. He said, “In majority of the cases, there is no option left for parents but to cold sponging to the children to prevent fever from rising.”

Though no patient has been reported from the PAP and Cantonment area for any water-borne disease, people swimming in the pools of various leading hotels, educational institutes, including Government Sports College and also Gymkhana have reported fallen ill with various water-borne infections.

When contacted, Umesh Kumar, swimming coach at the Government Sports College, confirmed that though the filtration plant of the pool was constructed in 1985, it was never maintained since then by the sports department. “The Health Department officials too failed to visit pool till date to check the quality of the water. Though we have around 200 people coming here for swimming everyday, we do not have a proper filtration system in place to clean the water,” said Umesh. He also informed that though an employee from the Health Department used to operate the filtration plant of the pool, the plant was now being operated by the employees of the sports department only.

Also when contacted, OP Thakur, General Manager of Hotel Ramada, said: “Though utmost precautions are being taken during monsoon season to clean the pool water, sometimes repeated rain does cause little flaw in the filtration process. We are soon planning to cover the pool with glass ceiling to further prevent any inconvenience to our guests.”

Civil Surgeon RL Bassan said water samples would be taken randomly to check the presence of bacteria or any other infectious microbes into the swimming pools across the city.