How safe is the water supplied to your home by the local civic agency?
You may want to double check the purity of water supplied by the BWSSB as more than half the sanctioned posts in its quality monitoring division are vacant. Two senior chemists are tasked with analysing more than 1,000 samples collected from various parts of the city each day.
According to specifications, the BWSSB is supposed to collect at least one water sample per 10,000 consumers every day to ascertain whether the water supplied is safe for consumption.
As there is only one engineer and three vans in its water quality monitoring division, the BWSSB has asked its maintenance staff to collect samples wherever necessary.
“Though the BWSSB is managing to collect over 1,400 water samples every day, now there are only two senior chemists to analyse the samples, which is highly inadequate. One of the senior chemists died and another senior chemist retired recently. Even the infrastructure quality monitoring department is heavily understaffed,” an official said.
Of the four sanctioned posts in the infrastructure quality monitoring department, three are vacant.
The quality monitoring team is supposed to evaluate all buildings, filtration and treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, pump houses and other facilities set up to supply water to the city. More than two-thirds of the clerical and secretary level posts too are vacant in the quality monitoring division. Therefore, meter readers are made to perform the responsibilities of the engineers.
The present posts were sanctioned in 1982 when the BWSSB was supplying around 300 MLD to the city. Though the BWSSB now supplies around 1,200 MLD of water, no new posts have been created.
According to one of the officials, the Comptroller and Auditor General has observed that the samples collected and analysed by the BWSSB are inadequate when compared to the quantity of water supplied by it.