The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : ‘Pray’ before you drink and eat

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Thursday, Aug 28, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

‘Pray’ before you drink and eat

The quality of water in small hotels and hostels is reportedly ‘dubious’

Quality of water that is supplied to hotels, hostels by and large ‘good’
Lack of safe storage facilities and monitoring of quality missing at these places

HYDERABAD: The quality of water, served for consumption and used to cook your favourite meal, continues to remain dubious at various small and medium sized hotels in twin cities.

This is not all. Corporate colleges, boasting of good boarding facilities, have no mechanism in place to check quality of water, served to students. This comes directly from water quality analysts of city-based Institute Preventive Medicine (IPM), who maintain that by and large, quality of water, in terms of chlorination, is good till the water reaches hotels and hostels. Safe storage facilities of water, subsequent maintenance and monitoring of the quality are ‘just not there’ at hotels and hostels.

Kukatpally case

“This is chronic at all small and medium sized hotels and corporate hostels. They have sumps and overhead tanks and invariably, sumps are located at floor level and during rain storm water mixes with stored water. This water is again pumped to overhead tanks for use,” says Chief water analyst of Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM) G. Chenna Keshavulu.

Recently, students of a corporate college at Kukatpally started reporting sick. “Several parents decided to pull them off from hostel. On inspection, the sump’s surface had a thick layer of moss and water pipes were rusted. This could have been avoided had they chlorinated the facilities,” says Mr. Keshavulu.

Faulty system

Authorities point out that hotels ‘short circuit’ the preventive steps by fixing water purifiers. “They don’t serve water directly from the water purifier. They again store water at some place, which again raises chances of recontamination,” says A. Vani Naidu, a women entrepreneur working on water quality in slums at Kukatpally.

“At least eight out of ten hotels have this problem of bad storage facilities. Awareness is the key and it’s cheap to maintain because it costs only Rs. 2 to chlorinate 1,000 litres of water. We have found E-Coli bacteria, which indicates presence of faecal matter in sumps,” the water analyst said.

Grade-I type of chlorine is ideal to use in hotels and hostels. “We don’t suggest Grade-II chlorine because it makes water turbid,” the water analyst said.

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Andhra Pradesh