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| Students rely on unsafe hazardous drinking water in Govt Schools | | | M S NAZKI
Early Times Report
Poonch, July 27: Surprisingly the students in government schools in Poonch district rely on unsafe drinking water, according to high placed sources within education department.
Sources
The drinking water at hundreds of schools in poonch dist has been found to contain alarming levels of toxins including lead and other chemical alike pesticides.
If experts are to be believed these contaminants have almost surfaced at public and private schools in the entire Poonch while others had no such facility i.e. lack drinking water.
"The consumption of contaminated drinking water over the past years has infected a good number of the school children in the distt population by Helicobacter pylori (H pylori) virus, which is considered as the main cause of gastric cancers.
Sources said that the drinking water testing facilities of Poonch distt lack equipment to detect the presence of H pylori. "Government water-testing facilities rely on coliform bacteria, a bacterial indicator to evaluate the safety of source waters, but H.pylori has been found in waters where coliform indicators were absent," they added.
They said that unsafe water supply was responsible for H.pylori infection. "Majority of the infectious disease in children are because of the contaminated water. "I have seen in children who have been infected with H.pylori that causes most of the gastro duodenal diseases," they added.
According to Rural Development Ministry's survey atleast 60% of villages and over 40% of schools in Poonch district rely on unsafe drinking water.
"Roughly one of every five schools violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the past decade, according to data collected by the ET, sources said.
In recent years, students at many schools fell ill after drinking tainted water. Experts say the testing requirements fail to detect dangerous toxins such as lead, which can wreak havoc on major organs and may retard children's learning abilities.
Sources said that the regular water tests were not conducted in any of the schools of the Poonch District. Meanwhile Public Health Engineering (PHE) officials admitted the widespread reliance on unsafe drinking water was worrisome. "It is a fact that our schools don't have access to safe drinking water," one of the PHE officials said. |
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