The West Bengal Government has ventured to produce bottled drinking water Pran Dhara with seven bottling plants across the state. The Public Health & Engineering Department, responsible for supplying safe drinking water to all the people of the state has done a record amount of work though it had to create proper infrastructure.
The seven plants producing around three thousand bottled water per hour are at Haringhata, Nodakhali, Baharampur, Maldah, Siliguri and Coochbehar. Two more plants are being set up soon. The 1 lt bottle will cost Rs 18 while the 500 ml bottle will cost Rs 9.
State Public Health & Engineering Minister Subrata Mukherjee said that Pran Dhara is using surface water from the Hooghly River, which is being processed to get rid of all impurities and harmful elements through proper scientific processes of distillation.
It has been experienced during relief works that water pouches produced through Mobile Treatment Units (MTU) are very useful for easy distribution of drinking water to the stranded people, but this type of packaging is not sustainable for a long time and also may get damaged due to leaking/bursting of poly packs.
To overcome these difficulties, the Public Health Engineering Department introduced ‘Pran Dhara’. For the first time this type of Package Drinking Water Plant was installed at Dakshin Roypur Water Treatment Plant Complex in the year 2012-13 in accordance with BIS Specifications. Capacity of this plant is 3600 Bottles of 1000 ml or 500 ml per hour.