Botswana’s bottled water under the microscope

The Botswana Bureau of Standard and the Department of Regulatory Compliance will from June this year implement the revised bottled water compulsory standards that will subject all drinking bottled water to safety tests.

 Local manufacturers and importers of such water were called to a workshop Wednesday where the compulsory standards called the BOS 143:2011 for bottled water other than natural water and BOS 262: 2011 for natural water were revealed. 

The standards specify the physical and chemical requirement for the water.

 BOBS manager of compulsory standards, Alfred Kgotlaetsile said they intend to have regular inspections of   imports at border posts such as Ramatlabama, Ramotswa and the Kazungula ferry. Last week it was reported that bottled water from Zimbabwe found its way into Botswana despite having been declared unfit for human consumption in that country.  

 Bantsi Bantsi from the Standards Department at BOBS said at the workshop that bottled water are often wrongly labeled and if not scrutinized could prove to have harmful substances to human body such as wrong chemical composition and bacteria.

Failure of producers to comply with the standards may result in an offence punishable by three-year imprisonment or P5000 fine.

 Kgotlaetsile revealed that BOBS recalled over 14 700 unit of products mostly electrical appliances from the market last year due to failure to meet the minimum required standards.