SHAH ALAM - Every year, people especially in the east coast states would be affected by floods.
The natural disaster would certainly become a key topic discussed as it is taking a toll on the quality of people's lives.
In fact, every time when floods hit the country, we would be served with tragic news on deaths due to drowning, electric shocks or deaths due to leptospirosis (rat urine infection).
However, if we look closely, such incidents happened mostly because of the lack of awareness, and the attitude of certain people disregarding safety aspects during floods.
The situation gets worse when some parents let their children play in the floodwaters without even taking previous incidents as a lesson.
Some parents even described forbidding children from playing in floodwaters as controlling their freedom.
What was even more disappointing was that there were adults recording videos of the children playing in the floodwaters for social media content.
This, posed a risk on children as their safety was neglected and it is not the best example to be set for children.
Parents should be playing an important role to monitor their children's activity at all times during the floods to prevent unwanted incidents.
Being strict does not mean ‘violating’ their rights to freedom, but to ensure their safety.
Although the water looked as if it was clean, that does not mean that it would be harmless.
Take the reports on flood tragedies in the newspapers and online news portals as a mechanism to avoid unwanted incidents from recurring.
Do not take any risks because we do not know what will happen because maybe it could cause death or the possibility of being infected by Covid-19 due to non-compliance of the standard operating procedures (SOPs).
In conclusion, flood is not a water festival. We need to always take precautions.