Viral diarrhoea spreads in Paikarapur housing society | Bhubaneswar News
Bhubaneswar: In a major cause for concern, viral diarrhoea has gripped a prominent housing society at Paikarapur in Kalinga Nagar, on the city outskirts, allegedly due to contamination of groundwater that the residents in the society are currently using.Residents alleged that the sewerage treatment plant installed by the developer of the project does not have the approval of the pollution control board to operate. Due to its improper operation, the groundwater in their area became contaminated.“The developer committed back-to-back violations. They constructed the treatment plant but did not properly hand over the facility to us. Right now, it is contaminating the groundwater we are using,” alleged president of the housing society, Ajit Kumar Choudhury.Sources said out of the 1,200-odd families in the housing society, almost a quarter of them are affected by the viral diarrhoea. The issue escalated to such an extent that the residents even wrote to the chief minister’s office for immediate intervention.“We filed complaints on different forums, including the CMO recently. After our complaints, a team of officials from the Water Corporation of Odisha and the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation came and tested the water,” Choudhury said.He said the test report confirmed the contamination. “After the confirmation, we are regularly checking and taking all possible steps with the help of the technical team from BMC to purify the water before its supply to the households,” the president said.A few days ago, a similar situation arose at Nilamadhav Niwas in Niladri Vihar, where more than 160 cases of viral diarrhoea were reported in a few days. BMC swung into action and controlled the situation.“Our city health team has been monitoring the situation of such epidemics in the city and is taking action to control the situation. At Paikarapur, our technical team has provided the required chemicals and materials for purifying the water,” said mayor Sulochana Das. |
