Chennai has 13 pc share in Rs 13,0000 crore packaged drinking water

It is lifestyle and not safety that resulted in the shift to packaged drinking water, say Metro Water officials

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Metro water supplies 831 million litres a day (MLD) of water to Chennai yet residents in many localities are shying away to use it for drinking purpose.

Even though the water from the public water distribution agency is safe to drink claim officials, people still prefer packaged water.

A senior Metro Water official quoting a study done by a private water agency said that the packaged drinking water market is worth Rs 13,0000 crore of which Chennai alone has a 13 per cent market share. Interestingly, the state also tops in the number of BIS certified packaged drinking water manufacturing plants.

He said that the preference of packaged water in Chennai is due to the growth of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the city of which food and beverage consist of nearly 25 to 30 per cent.

He said people in Chennai prefer branded water as such many private players are setting up their plant to tap the market here. While the market may be crowded it is only a small quality of water, which could be around 5 to 7 million litres a day (MLD), is consumed by people. “It is the niche market,” said the official.

The growth of packaged water in the city started in the 1990s when the city witnessed a huge growth. Initially there were only two brands Golden Eagle and Hello, which were consumed only during functions, said another metro water official.

But the preference for bottled water grew as the income of the people in the city also grew and this also resulted in mushrooming of many companies.

But still many prefer to drink from the piped water, which is supplied to the city after being treated in the five different plants in the city.

“The surface water is first chlorinated in the plant, then alum is added to lessen the turbidity then it is filtered through rapid sand filteration method so that the solid waste gets removed. Now we use pulsar technology to treat the water in our 530 MLD plant in Chembarambakam,” the official said.

“The focus is on residual chlorine during the delivery. It should be .2ppm besides the ph levels should be 6.5 to 8.5 and the TDS should be less than 500,” the senior official said.

Interestingly, Metro Water officials prefer the tap water to packaged drinking water. A senior official reasons that for years one drank the tap water. “How could one quantify that it is unsafe,” he reasons.  

But safety has at times been an issue and even played a crucial role in the defeat of the DMK regime following series of complaints about sewage mixing with water or the quantity of residual chlorine in the water. Interestingly, the government is now spending Rs 189 crore in improvement of water and sewerage facility in the core city. Currently, the water samples are monitored regularly. “We monitor 3,500 samples a day besides we are also planning to introduce automated inline water quality monitoring system to constantly monitor the quality of water supplied to residents.

Officials said that the Rs 1.80 crore project would be implemented with setting up monitoring devices at 50 spots across the city.

Currently, Metro Water supplies 831 MLD of water to the city. Interestingly, this is six or seven times more than what it was supplying in 1987. “We were supplying 182 MLD in 1987 which was scaled up to 610 in 2010,” a metro water official added.