The concerns follow the death of a Congolese teenager on Christmas Day while swimming in the Murray River, the country's number one blackspot for drownings.

According to Royal Life Saving Australia, 33 per cent of the 99 drowning deaths that occurred in NSW during the 2020-21 financial year were linked to rivers and creeks.

Statistics also show that a third of those drowning in Australian waters derive from multicultural backgrounds, which is no surprise to Wagga resident Rupinder Kaur, who said swimming is not considered recreational in some countries.

"Coming from an Indian background ... my family and friends from little villages had no idea what a swimming pool is," she said.

With regular access to pools and swimming centres costly for larger families over summer, natural waterways are often considered an inexpensive alternative.

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Yet, members of the multicultural community can underestimate the dangers associated with rivers and creeks.

Wagga's Multicultural Council has previously led swimming programs to teach new refugees water safety skills, but coronavirus and a lack of funding have meant no lessons have taken place in the last two years.

While Ms Kaur recognises the benefits of such programs, she said learning to swim was not often a priority for those settling into a new country.

She suggested image-based signage in prominent locations across the city would raise the vigilance of those entering unsupervised waters. "I'm not suggesting for the whole year-round, but especially in the peak season," she said.

Royal Life Saving NSW regional manager Michael Dasey said the number of incidents this summer would suggest that not enough had been done to reduce fatalities.

Yet the challenge to preserve lives has been increasingly difficult as regional communities grow more diverse.

"A lot of the resources ... do include versions in other languages however, a lot of that is often centralised around prominent languages and often [other] languages or cultures can be overlooked," Mr Dasey said.

This is an issue the Multicultural Council has been determined to erase on a local level, with CEO Belinda Crane saying resources inclusive of the city's most common refugee backgrounds are now available.

"We worked with Royal Life Saving ... with some money that we received, to put [water safety resources] into a few different languages which they didn't have before," she said.

Ms Crane considers water safety as essential, not only for the preservation of life but for inclusivity.

Swimming programs organised by the MCWW will resume in April 2022 after having secured enough funding to proceed.

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