Chandigarh, July 15
In a communication to The Tribune following the investigative story on contaminated packaged drinking water samples on Friday, representatives of the Small Scale Water & Beverage Manufacturers Association have given their response to the story.
They have stated that they are the licensees of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) which is the governing and licensing authority on packaged drinking water in India. “We always follow their guidelines in a very strict manner and, secondly, the BIS authorities check our units at their own free will even without informing us (as a surprise visit). They regularly lift our samples from the market and send them for testing to BIS/NABL approved laboratories for testing.”
The letter also stated that no single failure was reported till date in E. coli, Coliform and Faecal streptococci bacteria in their samples by the BIS. “The major issue is whether the Punjab Agriculture University Laboratory is NABL/BIS-approved or not, for the testing of packaged drinking water as per BIS 14543:2004. How can we be sure about the testing method adopted by this lab?”
The communication asks whether the second lab reported in the newspaper whose name was not mentioned, was that approved or not approved by NABL/BIS for packaged drinking water. “The TPC count reported in the newspaper is again a contestable issue, because the number of count mentioned in the news item cannot be seen in one plate and moreover they have not mentioned the quantity of water used for testing TPC as there is a limit of less than 100 counts in 1 ml of water and the same has not been reported in any test report till date.”
The statement also said that, “we know it is your social responsibility to protect the rights and interests of the general public, to make them aware of the quality of products but giving such a wrong and damaging news-items without even going through the subject properly may kill the small-scale manufacturers of packaged drinking water who have valid licences under BIS.”
The letter asked why The Tribune had not found out the illegal manufacturers of packaged drinking water without having the BIS licence who were selling their products openly in the Chandigarh market
and playing with the lives of the people.
The members who have submitted the communiqué are Mrs Sima Pandey Chaudhary of Equal Mineral Water and Mr Vinod Goyal of Goyal Aqua & Packages from Panchkula, Mr Surjit Singh of Square Mineral Water Pvt. Ltd. from Mohali and Mr Gurmeet Singh of Punjland Beverages from Ludhiana.
The Tribune correspondents reply: The laboratory used for testing of water samples, the PAU, is listed on the BIS website under, “List of specialised labs occasionally used by the BIS for which BIS is not having facilities for all the range of products / parameters.” The code for PAU is listed as 9106134. According to Dr (Mrs) P P Sahota, Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology at Punjab Agriculture University at Ludhiana, “We have a revolving fund scheme (scheme for generating funds for the University) for microbiological analysis of water, food and milk samples and all Punjab Government offices come to our laboratory for testing of these samples. This has been going on since 1988.”
With reference to the TPC or Total Plate Count, the figures indicated in the report are for 1 ml of water and, therefore, are determined to be above permissible limits since the limit is set at less than 100 per ml.
Dr (Mrs) P.P. Sahota, Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology at Punjab Agriculture University at Ludhiana, where the tests were conducted reiterated the testing process saying, “The samples drawn for testing were in accordance with the BIS norms and the count is per ml of water.”
