KARACHI, Oct 17: Not satisfied with laboratory reports concerning chlorine levels in piped water, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) health department has begun distributing chlorine tablets among town health officers for limited use at households receiving poor quality water.

Sources in the KMC said on Wednesday that town health administrations were also being provided with results of water samples drawn daily from their respective areas so that they can also take preventive measures against the spread of brain-eating infection caused by Naegleria fowleri.

Around 32 per cent of water samples collected on Wednesday by the officials of Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) and KMC’s quality control inspectors, for surveys conducted separately, were found to be without any chlorine.

Another 24 per cent of the samples had only traces of it.

In a survey conducted by the KMC’s quality control and regulation department, a total of 50 samples were collected — 10 from Landhi, Liaquatabad and Orangi, 17 from Lyari and three from Saddar — and none of them tested positive for chlorine.

The samples were collected from the main pipelines carrying water to residential areas.

The KWSB also conducted a separate survey and took 136 water samples from 16 towns across the city. Out of them, 10 samples did not contain chlorine, 45 showed traces of it, while 81 had chlorine ranging from 0.15 ppm to 1.5 ppm (parts per million).

Moreover, 37 samples were collected from Gulshan-i-Iqbal — three of them did not have chlorine, while 18 had traces of it — states the KWSB quality report.

From Gulberg town, from where three deaths were reported owing to Naegleria in the recent weeks, a total of 17 samples were drawn. Four samples were found to test negative for chlorine while eleven had traces of it. This, said many health officers, was sign of deficiency.

Other towns from where the samples were collected and tested negative for chlorine included Korangi (two samples) and Bin Qasim (one sample).

In a joint drive, the KMC’s quality control and regulation department and KWSB collected 10 samples from Gulberg town and five from North Karachi on Tuesday. All of them, including a sample drawn from the health office of North Karachi town did not test positive for chlorine.

The health EDO, Dr Imdadullah Siddiqui, said that thousands of children were suffering from water-borne diseases and the KWSB should improve the quality of water it supplies to consumers. He said that around 100,000 chlorine tablets had been provided by the WHO to the provincial health department and they were being distributed to town health officers for handing them out to households receiving water of poor quality.

A senior health officer at the KMC, Dr Aslam Pervez, while replying to a question by Dawn about the methods being use for checking chlorine levels, said that the staff of both the utilities, KMC and KWSB, used a chlorine meter to measure its level in water. Even separate tests after the collection of 15 samples by KWSB and KMC personnel gave the same results. Dr Pervez said that a single purification tablet could be used for purifying five to six litres of water. After half an hour of putting the tablet in the water, it can be used for drinking or other purposes.

Meanwhile, the managing director of KWSB, Misbahuddin Farid, said on Wednesday that the water board had established an emergency monitoring cell to ensure that the water being supplied to the people of Karachi was up to WHO standards.

The MD said that the water supplied to Karachi was done so after adding ample amount chlorine to it. However, it was added according to a specific formula since an excess is dangerous to health. “The KWSB ensures that 2.5ppm chlorine is added at all the six filter plants,” he claimed.

Mr Farid said that 25 chemists were working on six filter plants and they tested more than 150 samples of water every day. “The chlorine evaporates from the water after a certain time,” he said. “But it kills the bacteria before that happens.”

The MD stressed the need for devising a combined strategy for collecting water samples to prevent overlapping of work by different departments. He called for sharing of laboratory results and urged the media personnel to understand that the only authentic test report on the state of water was the one provided by the KWSB.

He requested the people, associations, mosque committees, hospitals, schools, colleges, shopping malls and offices to ensure that the underground and overhead water tanks are clean. If there was mud sitting at the bottom of tanks, he said, it will affect the efficacy of the chlorine since it dissolved all the chlorine within half an hour.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association has also expressed concern over the news reports highlighting the poor quality of water. The association said that the disease caused by Naegleria fowleri was absolutely preventable, merely by maintaining the optimum level of chlorine in water which was 2ppm. It also stressed strict vigilance by the authorities concerned in order to prevent an otherwise fatal disease.