Are Essar’s water filters at BMC office Mumbai necessary?

In Mumbai’s BMC office, Essar installed water filters as part of its CSR programme. How necessary was it?

Providing Mumbai citizens with safe drinking water and maintaining the city’s cleanliness fall under the purview of the BMC. Nevertheless, it is seen that BMC staff are using water from the water filters that Essar Foundation and Essar Ports have placed at the BMC office as part of their CSR programme.

Mumbai’s tap water is one of the Nation’s cleanest sources of drinkable fresh water. In that circumstances, it is illogical to need a water filter at the secretariat of an organisation that is in charge of ensuring the mobility of tap water. This is more than alarming since it begs the question of how the public can have faith in BMC when its own staff has little faith in the organization and relies on filters to purify the water. Why did the Essar Foundation and Essar Trusts feel the need to put water filters in the office that was supposed to make sure that the tap water was portable in the first place?

P. Velrasu, an Additional Commissioner at the BMC, claims that Mumbai’s water is so pure that residents can drink it straight from the faucet. In fact, the water that BMC purifies and treats has won praise on a National scale. Rumours claim that the water from taps across the country is not as clean as the water provided by BMC. For this accomplishment, BMC has also received praise from the Indian Water Works Association. Even after this, Essar Foundation and Essar Ports felt the need to install water filters to help people in Mumbai who are charged with the duty of providing the general public with clean drinking water.

The CSR Journal got in touch with the relevant Essar CSR team members to ask them about these issues. The team’s response was that the water filter was delivered as a result of a request from BMC and in accordance with the business’s CSR policy. The corporation presumably forgot that CSR is not done on demand, but rather when there is a real need.

The D ward of BMC is where Essar’s headquarters are located. 18 of these water filters have been installed at all of BMC’s outposts in the D ward by Essar Foundation and Essar Ports as part of their CSR project. About 2,000 BMC “Safai Karamcharis,” according to the firm, will benefit from the project.

Essar’s CSR programme to install water filters as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan would have had a considerably greater societal impact if it had been carried out effectively.

Instead of installing these water filters in the BMC offices, it would have made more sense to install them in rural and remote areas where contaminated water is a serious problem and people are actually becoming ill due to lack of clean water. This would not have only made sense but would also have been regarded as important and commendable. Because the corporation would then be using its CSR funds to solve the real issues. But its action of installing water filters in a location where they are not needed makes them utterly ineffective. Doesn’t it?