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Every Sunday at exactly eleven, swimmers in the Overbosch pool in The Hague are taken out of the water for a half-hour break. The reason for this strange situation: While the Savior is eating lunch, no one can pay attention. The additional staff cannot be tracked.
tgsource: ANNP
It doesn’t matter if there are many people or not in the Overbosch pool, at Vlaskamp in The Hague. Anyone who goes swimming on a Sunday morning should get out of the water at eleven anyway and change. Anyone who wants can come back later. But at the eleventh hour, everyone has to change, so waiting in a swimsuit is not an option.
Between eleven and a half past eleven, the lifeguard on duty can take a break and have a quiet lunch. He doesn’t have time for that while swimming. As with us, municipalities and cities are always looking for employees who can be additionally deployed.
Ordinary swimmers are now used to it and don’t mind it. Or they make sure they arrive on time or just dive into the water after their lunch break.
But Shiva de Winter, chairman of the Dutch Foundation for Water and Swimming Safety, is not happy about that. “It’s a very unfriendly solution towards customers,” he says.
De Winter will find other metrics such as shorter working hours understandable, but not this measure. “If a swimming pool must be closed for safety reasons, I understand that. But an action like that has nothing to do with safety.”
An assessment will be made in the second half of August and consideration will be given to whether the Sunday holiday will remain or be removed again.
