AP to take up special drive against unlicensed packaged drinking water plants
VIJAYAWADA: In view of a recent High Court direction on the mushrooming of unlicensed and packaged drinking water plants, the AP food safety department would take up a special drive across the state to identify plants without BIS certification and shut them down.
A section of those running the drinking water plants moved the High Court recently to complain about the presence of such plants and sought action.
Accordingly, the HC directed the authorities to ensure that only packaged drinking water plants having all requisite permissions and BIS certification be allowed to operate and shut down all unauthorised plants.
The food safety department would take up a special drive to identify the packaged drinking water plants having no licence and BIS certification in order to close them.
Given the huge demand for purified water, the NTR district alone has six to seven plants with all mandatory licences and BIS certification while the rest have no licence. The district has nearly 1,000 such water plants sans licence.
As per norms, the licence is issued by the food safety department while permission is required from the revenue authorities for digging borewell under APWalta, NOC from the local body, permission from the Discom for power connection under the commercial category, permission from legal metrology, a licence from district industries centre and ISI certification from the Bureau of Indian Standards and so on.
Though the district collectors and revenue officials are expected to keep a tab on such plants under Section 133 of CrPC and under norms of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, there is no close monitoring of their operations. Corruption as usual is another problem.
State food safety nodal officer Poornachandra Rao said, “Based on direction from the High Court, we will be taking up a special drive against the unauthorised units.”
On the other hand, the sale of purified water in cans without any seal is allowed and all the norms are applicable to the sale of purified water in sealed and labelled containers.
