All that is packaged is not pure. This became evident when an anti-encroachment team from the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) stumbled upon an illegally operating water bottling plant which was operating amidst a cluster of unauthorized hutments in Kashimira on Friday.
The team led by ward officer Swapnil Sawant under the supervision of deputy municipal commissioner Ajit Muthe had gone to raze unauthorized tenements in the Dachkulpada area of Kashimira when they stumbled upon an illegally operating bottling and packaging plant in one of the tenements.
The civic team was shocked to learn that the water was sourced from a bore-well and stocked into huge tanks, before bottling it into 20-litre cans to be sold as packaged drinking water, sans any type of scientific treatment.
“While the illegal structures were demolished and a case under the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act, 1966 was registered against two people including-Govind Vishwakarma and Imtiaz Sayyed Hemu, we will officially intimate our Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) counterparts in Thane about the illegal water plant.” confirmed Muthe.
The incident has yet again exposed that there is virtually no mechanism in place to keep a tab on such illegal plants which have been mushrooming across the district. Operating sans any type of licenses, such illegal plants do not adhere to hygienic and testing rules, thus risking lives of people who consume this water.
