溺水事件引发对夏季儿童安全的关注

Child safety is an issue which becomes more pronounced during the summer. The schools are closed but parents are still working, so there is no one to look after the children at home. This problem is serious in China's rural areas, where unattended children often play in treacherous rivers and ponds.

According to the Hunan Provincial Education Department, 178 primary and secondary school students drowned in Hunan in 2012. Drowning is the biggest cause of unnatural deaths amongst school children.

On June 26, an accident devastated a family in Wenqing Village, Jiangxi Province, where two brothers and their sister drowned at the same time in a nearby pond. The accident occurred when the adults were out doing farm work.

One villager commented on the unexpected nature of the accident.

"The parents don't allow their children to go near the pond, but since they were working on the farmland, they didn't know their kids were playing there."

The children's parents are migrant workers in South China's Zhuhai City. Upon returning home, they were hospitalized as a result of their grief. According to rough estimates by local official Zou Jingbo, 50 to 60 percent of children in the village are left behind at home when their migrant worker parents go out to find employment.

To prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future, Lianqiao Village in Fuyang, Zhejiang Province built their own swimming pool. Sun Jianyuan is head of the village.

"We built the pool to teach children how to swim, so they can protect themselves when accidents happen. The maintenance cost for the swimming pool is more than 30,000 yuan a year."

Children from the 800-strong village can swim here for free; the Fuyang Municipal authorities even send in coaches to teach them. But with an income of 200,000 yuan a year, the village is finding it hard to keep the thousand-square-meter pool running.

In contrast, children in cities are much luckier. In Shanghai's Minhang District, all third-grade students attend swimming lessons for free. Gu Wenxiu is the Principal of Qibaomingqiao Primary School:

"We have specific requirements for the students. In case they are thrown into water without time to prepare, without a swimming suit, they must be able to save themselves."

Previously, the students and the schools pay for the training fees together, but now the expense is covered by the Shanghai Municipal government. So far, more than 11,000 students from 60 primary schools have learnt to swim in Minhang District, Shanghai.

However, governmental assistance is yet to reach children in rural areas. According to figures from the population census carried out in 2010, China now has 61 million children who are left behind by migrant worker parents; that's one in every five children throughout the country. Ultimately, their well-being will affect the future of this nation.

For CRI, I'm Laiming.