Even as the city battles water scarcity, here is another bit of data that adds a new dimension to the city's water woes. As per the data provided by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), there is a rising number of water samples being unfit.
Every day the civic body takes a sample from each ward from the end users home to test the fitness of water. Looking at the data shared by the civic body, it is clear that the authority has reduced the number of samples for the laboratory test. And, despite the decreased number of water samples being taken for the test, there is an increase of unfit sample.
In 2017, the civic authority had taken 43,765 water samples from the end users of which 2,023 samples were resulted unfit for drinking. While there was decrease in the number of samples taken in 2018, which were 37,870 but out of which 2,234 samples were declared unfit for drinking by the civic body.
In 2019 till April 7,548 samples have been taken of which 396 samples have been declared unfit by the civic body.
The results show that quality of water being unfit is during summers, and there are some areas where water is bad through out.
"Some of the pockets in the south zone like Lambha, Behrampura, Damiimda, Saijpur Bogha etc have the age-old pipeline network and leakage results in the unfit samples," said Dr Bhavin Solanki, in-charge medical officer of health, AMC.
The officer said that once such a problem is reported from any locality, they send their team and do chlorination and distribute chlorine tablets in the surroundings. "We send a report to the engineering department also. After a week we do re-sampling of water from the same source to make sure that whether the query has been resolved or not," said Dr Solanki.
According to the leader of the Opposition, Dinesh Sharma, "Polluted water is a major concern in the city. The administration is actively under reporting and hiding unfit water samples. But the ground reality is that due to the polluted and contaminated water many people are falling sick. In east and south zone people falling ill due to waterborne diseases is high."
