During the recent Lunar New Year festive season, I took my younger cousins to the swimming pool at Springbloom condominium.

As it was not a planned visit to the pool, I was not prepared with the proper swimming attire.

However, given the tender age of my cousins, we brought our maids down with us to the pool so that they could help care for the children whose ages range between 11 months and five years.

To my surprise and disbelief, the maids were warned for not being in proper swimming attire and told to step out of the baby pool despite the fact that they had removed their footwear and rolled their pants up above the knee.

Suddenly, we found ourselves faced with a situation where we had only one adult in the pool taking care of five young children, while the rest of the adults could only stand near the perimeter of the pool.

As much as I understand that swimmers should be in proper swimming attire, I can't help but question the necessity for supervising adults to be attired as such in the baby pool, especially since it was a private pool.

From my perspective, the utmost consideration for a baby pool should be safety and adult supervision.

Given that there was no lifeguard present and that women do not have the privilege to enjoy water activities all month through, and taking into account the fact that, more often than not, it is the mother and the maid guiding the children in the pool rather than the father, I think pool guidelines need to be re-examined.

Greater flexibility should also be exercised for private pools to prevent any accidents or tragedies from occurring.

Valerie Wong Juwan (Ms)