Homes, hotels, restaurants and even wayside sherbet kiosks -- everywhere jar water is available nowadays as a safe drink. But question arose how safe it is.
Unauthorised drinking jar waters have flooded the market, putting public health at risk of different microbial diseases, experts said.
According to sources, over 80 per cent of the jar-water business is happening without label and brand names as they do not have standard approvals.
Kamal Prosad, director, certification mark, Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), said: "We have given approval to 160 companies to do jar-water business."
But, sector-insiders said, as many as 1200 companies are engaged in selling jar water across the country.
KM Arif Ul Kabir, adviser of the Pure Drinking Water Manufacturers Association in Bangladesh, said more than 1200 such water companies are there in the country.
He said of the large number, only a few have legal permission to do water business in jar and the remaining lot many are unauthorised and do not maintain hygiene.
The BSTI director said to stop unauthorised jar drinking water they conduct mobile court. In the last one year, they sealed 39 jar-water companies, jailed four persons and fined offenders more than Tk3.0 million only in Dhaka.
He said, "We do not have the actual data on the number of unauthorised jar-water traders."
Mr. Prosad of the BSTI said, "When we conduct mobile court, we check in 31 parameters but the main thing that we check is presence of heavy metals, coliform, total plate counts and others."
A microbiologist at the ICDDRB said people coming to the hospital with diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases used to drink unauthorised jar water that is threatening for other diseases in the long run.
He said bottled-water manufacturers maintain all the standard rules as per the BSTI prescription. But the quality of unauthorised jar is threatening as, in most cases, they pour WASA-supplied water into jars and market them without any legal procedure.
Another senior official in the BSTI said every day they conduct mobile courts to identify and punish the illegal companies and in last several days they sealed more than four companies which were manufacturing jarred drinking water without approval.
He said among the drinking-water customers maximum drink water from jars, which -- bar a few -- do not have brand names, labels and BSTI approvals. The official said most of the jar-water companies do not have approval.
He said customers for jar water in the commercial areas are more than that of bottled waters, which, in many cases, are not safe to drink.
The BSTI official said: "In getting our certification all the jar-or bottled-water companies have to maintain particular rules and conditions."
He said after maintaining the BDS-1240 compliance, the BSTI issues approval and in every six months there are inspections in the manufacturing units.
A manufacturing source said though the BSTI says they inspect twice a year, but, in fact, their presence is not seen. And some officials are being "managed by the manufactures not to be penalised".
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