It’s shocking that a large amount of mineral water being sold on the local market is unfit for human consumption, according to the Government Analyst Laboratory results whose tests were commissioned by NewsDay last week.
The results have brought to the fore the corrupt nature in the business itself. There is no doubt that water, sanitation and poverty are inextricably connected. Without clean water, there can be no escape from poverty.
Bottled water has become a lucrative business. After people realised that the local authorities’ water was not safe to drink, their perception was that bottled water was safe to drink, hence some greedy people saw an opportunity to venture into bottling water. We believe that bottling companies must be monitored and must comply with the regulations.
If anything, the results of the tests could open a Pandora’s box: Why has the sub-standard mineral water remained on the market hardly a month after the Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) condemned some 11 brands of bottled water? Even though these brands were banned, they have remained on the shelves of major supermarkets compromising the health of millions of consumers countrywide.
What remains to be seen is what other action SAZ and the Ministry of Health will take to ensure those compliant companies are not tainted by unscrupulous firms seeking profits at the expense of the people’s lives.
According to the Government Analyst Laboratory, water being sold under trade names Ad Life, Well Pure, Aqua Crystal, Century and Revive had harmful organisms and was not safe for drinking, while that sold under the names LeauChoisie and Aqualite had high chemical compositions.
What is also disturbing is that together with these companies, Harare City Council is also playing a big part as the samples of water supplied to Harare residents was also condemned as unsafe for human consumption.
The tests showed that some components found in the bottled water contained chemicals that slowly poison the human body. Out of 16 samples sent for testing by this paper, seven were condemned as unsafe. Zimbabwe is one of many African countries seeking to meet the Millennium Development Goals on health by 2015. This needs all the stakeholders to be involved. The prevalence of contamination (from man-made pollution and waste to naturally-occurring toxins), and the wide range of ways contaminated water can enter the human body are staggering.
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We are put at risk through drinking contaminated water; eating food that was grown, washed, or prepared using contaminated sources; eating food prepared in bowls or with utensils washed with contaminated water; acquiring germs from people’s hands that are then absorbed by eating, rubbing eyes, wiping noses; bathing and washing in unhygienic water; and providing and receiving medical care in unsanitary environments.
As long as our leaders love politics more than people’s health, the water system will always be contaminated. We urge researchers to do extensive work on bottled water in Zimbabwe so that bottled water companies that do not comply may be exposed and those which do comply may be protected.
Politics must not stifle the prosecution of these firms.
