Mineral water plants have become a source of minting money. But not many plants in the city follow the norms and quality checks and are setting up plants even in apartments. This blatant disregard for quality is making users susceptible to water borne diseases

If you want to be big and earn a quick buck, the best way is to open a mineral water plant in the outskirts of the city. The mineral water plants are cash cows. This is the only probable reason why we have around 300 mineral water plants (including reverse osmosis plants) in outskirts. There is always an increase in demand for potable drinking water in the city, most water plants in the city are banking on this are minting money by floating all the norms, quality checks.

Most plants in the city don’t follow the quality norms and people are not buying water but are actually buying diseases. The business of water cans which flourished in city has now even spread to rural areas in out skirts. Outskirts like Narsingi, Manikonda, Vattinagulapalli, Hydershakot, Pushpalguda, Gandipet, kismatpur, Rajendranagar and other areas have around 300 mineral water plants and on an alarming note only tens of them has proper permissions.

Even RO plants are being setup without proper permissions. ‘If one needs to start a plant with all proper permissions and BIS certificate it costs around Rs 50 lakh, if you care a hoot about permissions and quality the plant can be started with an outlay of Rs 3-4 lakh,” said a senior official at Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

Permissions required
Permission from industries department is mandatory followed by EM part 1 from small and medium enterprises department for setting of a minor water plant. If the capacity of the mineral water plant is more than 30 Litres per Hour (LPH), permissions have to be taken from department of factories, town planning, electricity, ground water and Pollution Control Board (PCB). The stark reality here is that most plants which have capacity more than 30 LPH have only permission from industries department.

Quality checks
To pass the standards set by BIS the water from the source has to pass through three levels of purification. In the first stage water needs to be chlorinated, the chlorinated water then has to pass through sand and micro filters and it is finally oxidised. BIS made it mandatory to test the quality of water for quality before and after every stage and also for the levels of chlorine and fluorides. But not many plants are diligently following the process.

“Not many plants even has laboratory for testing, we can only give BIS certification if we receive reports of all the quality checks done. Sadly we don’t receive any there are only very few plants that are dutiful in sending us the reports,” said a senior official with BIS.

With these plants flouting all the quality checks and norms, people buying water from these plants are susceptible to fall sick as most plants only do chlorination that too as a half measure. BIS also made it mandatory to print the certification, date of filling and best before date on the can. This too is not followed by any plant. People allege inaction on the part of the concerned officials, while the BIS officials say there are acting promptly on complaints and even did sealed a few plants.