Staff Reporter :
The High Court (HC) on Sunday asked the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA) to submit an explanation in the court on contaminated water supplied by it in four, out of 10 zones, in Dhaka.
WASA will have to submit a written explanation in the court within two weeks.
The High Court bench of Justice J B M Hassan and Justice Md Khairul Alam passed the order after going through a report placed by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, which said that water supplied by the WASA in four zones out of 10 zones are contaminated with arsenic, chlorine, E coli and ammonia.
The LGRD Ministry tested the water in 34 areas of 10 zones in the laboratories of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka University and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Re-search, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B).
Recently, the LGRD Ministry submitted the report in the Attorney General’s office.
Deputy Attorney General Motaher Hossain Sazu, who received the test findings, told the reporters that the water supplied to six zones was marked safe.DAG Motaher, however, could neither specify the extent of contamination nor names of the areas where the supplied water was contaminated.
Hearing a writ petition, the same bench on May 21 directed the LGRD Ministry to test WASA water supplied to 34 areas.
It has also directed the WASA to pay Tk 1.7 lakh to a committee formed by the LGRD Ministry for the test and asked the Ministry to submit the test report before it.
On May 16, Dhaka WASA admitted that its water supplied to 57 areas was polluted because of faulty pipes.
In April, several residents of Jurain went to the WASA Bhaban in Karwan Bazar with lemons, sugar, and a jar of murky water which they said was supplied by the WASA.
They tried to make WASA Managing Director Taqsem A Khan drink sherbet prepared with the WASA water.
A few days before that, Taqsem said WASA water was completely safe for drinking.
On May 7, a platform of residents of Jurain, Shyampur and Kadamtali areas told a mass hearing that WASA should be held accountable for supplying polluted water.
