A joint surprise check conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has revealed shocking violations of basic safety parameters in packaged drinking water units in and around Chennai.
A special team comprising CBI investigators and BIS scientists conducted simultaneous checks on the units at random last week and found that the packaged water meant for public consumption did not conform to the prescribed safety standards, agency sources said.
A majority of the 300-odd packaged drinking water plants from where samples were taken up for analysis did not have a laboratory or microbiologist, mandatory for assessing and certifying the quality of the water. In one of the plants located in West Mambalam here, CBI sleuths found water from a dirty overhead tank being manually filtered and packed in sachets and bottles and sold as mineral water, the sources said. “The tank had cockroaches and other insects. We have collected samples from a few plants for chemical analysis. Prima facie violation of basic safety norms was made out during the check in these plants,” a senior investigator told TheHindu on Monday.
