ISLAMABAD, Oct 17: The Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority cancelled licences of 28 companies found involved in marketing substandard bottled water for a couple of years.

Minister for Science and Technology Mir Changez Khan Jamali has provided to the National Assembly names of the brands whose licences had been cancelled. The water marketed by the companies, he said, had been declared unfit for human consumption by the PSQCA.

The brands are: Classic, Khas, Urooj, Hi-Aqua, Stream, Cool Spring, Health Care, Mountain Fresh, Zindagi, Multix, Ashlay Water, Eden, Pak Water, Dewlets, The Water, Evian, Leau, UBO, Buxton, Xtreme, Al-Atash, Hydra-7, Eye Line, Defence, Euphoria, Future Plus, Aqua Life and Asmo. All the companies marketing the brands are based in Karachi.

The minister said it was the duty of provincial and local governments to check adulteration in food items and take suitable action. But the PSQCA, which works under the Ministry of Science and Technology, is also involved in quality control and checks the purity of bottled water.

He said there were two divisions – North Region (Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and South Region (Sindh & Balochistan) — which monitored quality of products, including bottled water under the compulsory certification marks scheme.

Mr Jamali said under Section 14 of the Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority Act VI of 1996, the PSQCA had a mandate to monitor the quality of bottled drinking water and natural mineral water under SRO 638(I)/2001 dated 12-09-2001.

Manufacturers are required to comply with the relevant standards specifications.

Section 14 of the Act says: “The federal government may, in consultation with the Authority and by notification in the official Gazette, prohibit, with effect form such date as may be specified in the notification, the manufacture, storage and sale of any article specified therein which does not conform to the Pakistan Standard.”

A senior official of the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources told Dawn that the increasing demand of bottled water had prompted businessmen to invest in the industry and because of a mushroom growth of such companies it had become difficult for the government to control the quality of bottled water.