With the mercury is constantly rising in the national Capital, city police stations are facing a <g data-gr-id="46">moral-conundrum</g>. They are clueless over how to manage the drinking water as almost every police station has water coolers and with easy access to the police station, outsiders are taking chilled water away. Eventually, the police station staff and the visitors are forced to buy water from <g data-gr-id="29">market</g>.
As per police record, there are as many as 184 police stations across the city and each police station has over <g data-gr-id="34">150-member</g> staff. “A policeman works for more than 14 hours a day and also spends most of his duty hours at the police station. But the lack of basic amenities like availability of drinking water in the police station is posing a bigger threat to our health in this scorching heat,” said a cop on duty at Malviya Nagar police station.
Most of the police stations are facilitated with <g data-gr-id="33">50 liter</g> water cooler that has <g data-gr-id="36">in-built</g> purifier. The water-tank kept on the terrace of the station can store 500 <g data-gr-id="31">liter</g> of water. However, some of the police stations have 1000-liter tanks too. “It takes more than twenty minutes to cool down the water temperature to make it drinkable. But before we could get the water from the cooler, outsiders including auto-rickshaw drivers, street vendors and other passers-by take the water through bottles,” a police station staff who serves water and tea to tops cops in a South Delhi police station.
In an aggressive tone, a 47-year-old Sub-Inspector at Sarojini Nagar police station said, “As Delhi police’s slogan says-- With you, for you always; we cannot say ‘No’ to them. But they should understand that we can store <g data-gr-id="35">limited</g> amount of water that is provided by Delhi Jal Board. We are compelled to buy water from outside. We have to pay for chilled water as on regular basis we hardly get cold water to drink.”
There is no water cooler inside the station building which is a very big problem for the staff. The situation gets worst at police stations those have been already facing water scarcity.