By Our Reporter
Shillong, Nov 1: The FKJGP on Wednesday dared ministers and senior government officials to drink the water supplied by the PHE Department without filtering it. They said the ministers and officials should not hesitate in consuming the water since PHE Minister Marcuise N Marak has declared the water safe to drink.
The test results, which showed that the water in 44 of the city’s 46 communities was unfit for human consumption, were revoked by the PHE Minister.
FKJGP president Dundee C Khongsit said in a statement released here on Wednesday that “the ministers and officials should consume the water supplied by the PHE directly without any filtration since many of the poor families cannot afford to have aqua guard filtered water like in the Secretariat”.
He did, however, add that since the PHE Minister will attempt to defend his own department, they are not surprised by the denial.
Khongsit, in the meantime, stated that they had taken this action to gather water samples in response to complaints from numerous locals.
“We collected samples as part the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) of the State Food Testing Laboratory at Pasteur Hills. We did not gather the water samples at random as claimed by the minister,” he stated.
The FKJGP president added that they have given the test sample report to Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma and Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh, in addition to the PHE minister.
He claimed that if the PHE minister had read the study, he would not have made such a careless claim as to accuse the federation of picking samples at random.
Khongsit remarked, “We are confident that the PHE minister is aware of the water samples we have collected and knows how many are safe and unsafe.”
Additionally, he insisted on the release of the test results for the water samples taken from the Mawphlang Treatment Plant.