300 residents fall ill after drinking contaminated water in Noida

Over 300 people fell ill after consuming contaminated water in Kanchanjunga apartment of Sector-53 in the city. Medical assistance had to be given to at least 40 to prevent their condition from deteriorating. Water got contaminated after the sewer pipeline was allegedly connected to the drinking water supply due to oversight by a worker. There are 640 flats in the society. Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems are reported to be installed in all flats but the supply was so contaminated that even the RO systems were not able to filter dirty water.

According to A K Srivastava, RWA president of the Kanchanjunga Apartments society, there are 2,500 people who reside there. Some flats are still vacant. Over the last few days, residents were complaining of contaminated water supply but no action was taken on their complaint. He said that the Noida Authority was trying to find out the reason for supply of contaminated water and also checking the trunk line.

Meanwhile, a team of 15 doctors along with, R K Garg, CMO and other medical staff including two ambulances have been taking stock of the situation. Doctors have reportedly given medicines to 40 people. They also took samples of the contaminated water. Residents were also advised to buy bottled water till supply quality improved. “This is not a solution,” complained a resident who demanded a thorough inquiry into the incident. “This is not a permanent and futuristic solution too, we have installed RO in each flats but the unfortunate thing in the matter is that our ROs are not able to filter the contaminated water, this is very unfortunate as the authority’s senior officials and ground staff has not been able to tackle the situation as of now. We all have to depend on filtered water and packaging water which we are buying from nearby shopping complexes,” said M L Sharma, a resident of the society.

Meanwhile, M P Sharma, Project Engineer along with member of Noida authority’s team examining the water, said that apparently no leakage was seen in the authority’s pipelines which supply drinkable water.