Important beach safety messaging should be better targeted at migrant communities, a new report has found, with vital messages about rips and swimming between the flags not getting through.conducted by the UNSW Beach Safety Research Group examined the risk factors behind drowning deaths among south Asian migrants, who have been long overrepresented in drowning statistics.
More than a quarter of respondents also had a limited understanding of the red and yellow flag system, and more than half admitted they did not swim between them regularly.“We found that most people who live less than 10 years in Australia are the ones that visit beaches more frequently, but are less likely to have had swimming lessons, heard of the flags, understand things like rip currents, or have participated in a beach safety program,” report author Professor Rob Brander said.
"One of the main responses we got was that often they read signs, and they don't really understand the terminology,” he said.“And they thought it would help a lot if a lot of the common beach safety signage, for example, was translated in different languages.” Amar Singh, president of Turbans 4 Australia, believes broad messaging is often failing to penetrate migrant communities.
"People coming from different cultural backgrounds, language backgrounds, they have all those barriers to overcome before they can understand the basics.” "There's a lot of great programs out there that are trying to address the safety in these communities and I'm sure, you know, many of them are good. But the challenge is reaching these people and motivating them to be interested in learning to swim lessons and beach safety programs,” he said.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.