Passengers getting unsafe drinking water at bus stand

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 25

Showing scant regard to the health of thousands of passengers visiting the city bus stand on a daily basis, the PRTC management has been serving them ground water for years.

It is pertinent to mention here that Malwa region is known for the presence of uranium and other heavy metals in its ground water. Unaware of the source of water, passengers here have been drinking ground water for over decades now.

Despite being well aware of the situation, the PRTC authorities did not bother to install Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant to provide safe water to passengers.

According to sources, the PRTC has availed canal water connection, but due to the fact that the bus stand has the lone water tank, the canal water too gets stored in the same tank in which the ground water is stored.

Officials of the PRTC city bus stand said they had time and again written letters to the higher authorities to release funds for the construction of another water storage tank so that they could store canal water in it, but no step has been taken in this regard.

The PRTC recently installed two RO plants in the workshop of the city bus stand, which has provided some relief to PRTC employees. However, PRTC has not installed RO at the city bus stand to facilitate passengers.

Talking to Bathinda Tribune, Parveen Kumar, general manager, PRTC, said, “I have recently joined here. We are making all efforts to install RO plant at the city bus stand.”

He said they had recently installed two water coolers at the bus stand to provide cold potable water to the passengers. Besides, they have also contacted NGOs to serve cold potable water at the bus stand.

When contacted, District Health Officer (DHO) Ashok Monga said they had not collected water samples from the bus stand in the recent past.

Manjeet Narang, Managing Director, PRTC, said the matter of serving ground water to passengers had never been brought to his notice. He assured to install RO at the bus stand within a fortnight.