The High Court ordered on Tuesday an expert committee to submit a test report on water samples of 34 points in Dhaka city by the second week of July.
The samples will be collected from three different zones and four sources of Dhaka WASA or DWASA.
The HC bench of Justice JBM Hasan and Justice Khairul Alam issued the order after hearing the expert opinion of Sabita Rizwana Rahman.
Ms Rahman, chairman of microbiology department at Dhaka University, told the court of four DWASA water sources-groundwater, rainwater, Sitalakkhya and Buriganga rivers.
DWASA has more than 0.36 million outlets in 10 zones.
It needs to test samples of 15,858 outlets to gain 99 per cent confidence and that of 1,065 outlets to gain 95 per cent confidence, she said.
Writ petitioner advocate Tanvir told the FE that the HC asked Ms Rahman about the cost of the sample tests during a hearing of expert opinion.
The court actually wanted to know whether the cost of an estimated Tk 7.6 million for water tests could be minimised, he said.
Answering this, Ms Rahman informed the court that over Tk 7.56 million would be required for the test of 355 samples collected from each area of 10 zones.
The budget was fixed at the third meeting of the expert committee on May 14.
The court then ordered to test the water from four sources, 10 distribution zones, 10 random areas and 10 risky areas.
Replying to the court's query about the cost, Ms Rahman said in that case the cost would come down to Tk 0.17 million, Tk 5,000 for each sample.
Earlier on May 16, deputy attorney general submitted a report on water quality to the court on behalf of the local government ministry.
In the report, it was mentioned that there is high level of pollution in 59 areas under 10 zones.
The HC on November 06 last year ordered to form a committee to test DWASA water against a writ filed by Mr Ahmed.
The ministry concerned formed a four-member committee with additional secretary as its head on April 18 this year.
Other members of the committee are ICCDR,B senior scientist Monirul Alam, Prof ABM Badruzzaman of civil engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and Ms Rahman of DU.
The committee will test the samples at BUET, Dhaka University and ICDDR,B separately.
The cost of the tests will be borne by DWASA.
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