KNOW HOW TO SWIM – This measure, presented to the municipal council this Wednesday, will take effect on July 1, with no time limit in order to encourage young people to develop their aquatic ease. The city is also advancing on a sea basin
From July 1, young Marseillais and Marseillaises under the age of twelve will be able to go free to one of the fourteen municipal swimming pools in the city. This decision is on the agenda of the Marseille city council which meets this Wednesday.
Sébastien Jibrayel, the sports assistant, hailed “a political will”. Aware of the delays of the city and its children in learning to swim – 40% of kids not knowing how to swim well when they enter 6th grade, according to a study by the town hall (compared to 88% at the national level) –, the “municipality does not stand idly by,” he said.
The Mucem basin on the right track
If this measure is not limited to this summer, during which eleven of the fourteen municipal swimming pools are open – including six reserved for “I am learning to swim” devices, with which 5,000 children have learned to swim this year, it is not the only one to appear in the radius of the ambitions of the municipality to “catch up”. Marseille has an average swimming area of 4 m2 per 1,000 inhabitants, against 18 m², for example for Montpellier.