CHENNAI: Hundreds of patients and their attendants who throng the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital are left with no choice but to buy drinking water from outside as the reverse osmosis (RO) dispenser units installed in the hospital remain unusable.
A visit by TNIE and interactions with multiple patients, attendants and staff showed the dispensers are either dysfunctional, or non-functional for most hours of the day, or the water is not suitable for consumption.
This has led to a thriving business outside the hospitals with petty shops and individuals selling unpackaged water for Rs 3 to Rs 5 per litre if people bring their own bottles. A canteen located on the hospital premises is also selling such water for Rs 5 per litre, TNIE found.
The two RO dispensers in the waiting hall in Tower I and Tower II were not fit for use. One was dysfunctional and the other dispensed water at an extremely slow rate, but users said it was of poor quality
The RO dispenser inaugurated between Tower III and Tower II by Health Minister Ma Subramanian in 2023 is operational, but only for specific number of hours during the day. People complained that even the water from this was not of good quality.
Sitting at the crowded waiting hall in Tower 2, D Nagamma was waiting on Friday for some good news about her husband’s health. Her son walked in with a two-litre packaged water bottle. Buying water was not Nagamma’s first choice. She tried to use the RO dispenser in the same hall in vain. “It doesn’t taste good. The filters are not working, and the water is not clean. When I drank, I felt like vomiting.”
The condition of dispensers in the waiting halls of the other two towers are not very different. A cleaning staff confirmed that the RO inside Tower 1 stopped functioning last month. Blaming the users for the issue, the staff said, “The one in Tower 1 was installed recently, but people did not use it properly and broke it,” he alleged.
G Muthulekha, who had come to the hospital, said she first bought a 5 litre can from a shop inside for Rs 50 and then keep refilling it with unpackaged water sold Rs 5, a strategy many people followed to save money.
K Shantharam, dean, RGGGH, however, said there was no scarcity of quality drinking in the hospital. He said it was possible that people preferred to buy water outside as they did not prefer the taste of the water in the campus.
Emphasising that there is adequate water supply for all patients, he said work is under way to install an additional RO dispenser of 500 litre capacity between Tower I and Tower II. He said one more is coming up near the neurosciences building that is under construction.