A significant number of swimming pools in Sri Lanka are not adequately safe, with the absence of properly trained lifeguards identified as the principal concern, a senior Health Ministry specialist has said.
Dr. Samitha Siritunga, Chief Specialist of the Accident Prevention Division of the Non-Communicable Diseases Unit at the Ministry of Health and Mass Media, said every swimming pool should have lifeguards on duty to ensure swimmers’ safety, and that appropriate measures should be in place to prevent accidents and drownings, the Daily Mirror reported.
The schools figure
Representatives of the Ministry of Education told the same discussion that while Sri Lanka has 10,467 schools, only 66 currently have a swimming pool.
That is roughly one school in 160 — a ratio that frames the safety question as much as the regulatory one. Where pools are scarce, most children learn to swim, if at all, in rivers, tanks and the sea, which are precisely the unsupervised inland and coastal waters that dominate the national drowning toll.
Regulation, not just equipment
Officials said the lack of proper regulation of swimming pools — or inadequate implementation of the regulations that already exist — remains a major problem, and called for safety standards and regulatory mechanisms to be strengthened.
The distinction matters: the complaint is not that no rules exist, but that they are not being enforced.
Context
The warning lands against a drowning record that has been among the worst in South Asia. Police said in June that Sri Lanka had recorded 122 drowning deaths in the first half of 2026, following 595 in 2024 and 376 in 2025. A national drowning prevention mechanism was floated at an inter-ministerial meeting in May, but implementation has remained thin.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not say how many swimming pools operate in Sri Lanka, how many were assessed, or what proportion were found unsafe — the “significant number” is not quantified. It does not identify which authority licenses or inspects pools, what the existing regulations require, or whether any pool has been closed or sanctioned.
It does not say what forum the officials were addressing, whether hotel and club pools fall within the same rules, or how many of the country’s drowning deaths occur in pools rather than open water. Nor does it state what lifeguard qualification is recognised or who trains them.
The report also refers to an assurance on pool safety being signed by the Deputy Minister of Health and Mass Media, without explaining what was undertaken, by whom, or to what effect.
