With the city prepares to face monsoon, the civic body wants its employees to go literally in the deep waters to avoid 26/7 like situation. As the Meteriology department predicted a 26/7 like situation in the city during the monsoon, the BMC has decided to form a fully qualified rescue team.

As part of creating a rescue team, the civic body will provide training to as many as 350 of its employees in swimming, evacuation drills and rescue operation in case of flooding during the monsoon. Besides this, they are also given civil defence training to deal with any kind of disasters. According to civic officials, this training will start from June 1 and will be open to all ward officers, school teachers and other employees of the disaster management cell.

“Swimming is one of the essential exercises our employees should know. We had undertaken a survey and found that most of them didn’t know swimming. So it became a priority for us,” said chief of disaster control cell, Vilas Vaidya. The training will take place in BMC-owned swimming pools.

The 10-day training will also enable them to learn about evacuation drills to be carried out during monsoon and the other essential Do’s and Don’ts to be carried out. “We will also train police personnel and fire brigade personnel. Apart from that we will have a special training for tutor’s session. Employees who do better in the first session will qualify for becoming tutors, this is to build a stronger rescue force for the future,” said Vaidya.

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