The bottled water marketing companies in Sylhet, excepting three of them, do not have approval.
Even the authorities of the three companies, whose licences have already been renewed by the BSTI, do not follow the guidelines of the International Standard Organisation.
Sources in the Sylhet divisional office of Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution said they had postponed renewal of licences for drinking water marketing from beginning of the this year.
‘Renewal of the licences has been postponed as the companies concerned have not taken steps to fulfil the requirement of article 65 of the ISO guidelines. Yet the companies are marketing their containers and bottles of drinking water,’ an employee in the local BSTI said.
The drinking water company owners, however, blamed the BSTI authorities for imposing a new instruction for maintaining the ISO guidelines.
According to the ISO article 65, every company has to install automatic machines to clean and sterilise water jars, appoint a fulltime chemist or microbiologist and check health of workers every day in the plants, sources in the BSTI said.
The sources said the BSTI authorities served notices to all the 18 companies to upgrade the infrastructural and technological facilities in their respected bottling plants four months ago along side keeping the license renewal process postponed.
Sylhet BSTI assistant director Talath Mahmud told New Age that renewed licences of Abe Hayat, Wardun BD and Piyas — three companies that are marketing dinking water in the Sylhet city — had been issued before putting the condition of upgrading the plants.
‘License of the three companies would also be suspended from the next year, if they fail to meet the BSTI instruction by the time,’ Talath Mahmud said.
He added that they were mulling to launch drive against the companies who are marketing drinking water without BSTI approval.
Sylhet civil surgeon MM Ibrahim said, ‘The BSTI authorities must be strictly monitoring that the companies comply with the ISO article 65 which clearly defines the standard of drinking water.’
-With New Age input
