Eight children drown in ponds, canals in three days

Photos: AA

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In the last three days, eight children in various places across Turkey drowned in ponds, dams or irrigation canals.

In the eastern Ağrı province, Mustafa Özer, 14, drowned after going to the Patnos Dam after the high school entrance exam.

In Tekirdağ, northwestern Turkey, Muhammed Tokcan, 13, wanted to have a swim in a pond. His body was recovered after the water in the pond was partly discharged.

The bodies of two children, İdris Pütrü (17) and Zekeriya Negiz (13), who went into the Tigris river in the southeastern Şırnak province were recovered two days later.

In the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, four friends went into the Tigris river. They got caught in the current. One of them managed to get out of the river and asked for help, but his friends could not be saved.

A nine-year-old girl died in Serik, Antalya, in southern Turkey after falling into an irrigation canal.

Child drownings

Every year from May onwards, news of child drownings become more frequent in Turkey.

In an interview with bianet last year, Pınar Abdal of the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG), a group monitoring occupational safety and workers' deaths, pointed out the high number of child workers in the agricultural sector.

More than half of the people in places where seasonal agricultural workers stay are children, she said..

Ertan Karabıyık of the Development Workshop had noted that large irrigation canals were particularly dangerous. "Regardless of whether you know how to swim or not, you get caught in a current and lose control. Because of their structure, you can't hold on to something and get out. There is nothing to hold on like branches.

"And because there are no guardrails around the canals... In the past, there were problems with the canal inside the cities as well. Then they surrounded them with guard rails and drownings decreased." (AÖ/VK)