ISLAMABAD-The mushrooming growth of substandard and spurious beverages products in the twin cities posing serious threats to the health of people.
When the summer is at its peak, the business of low quality beverages is on the rise, attracting the poor people, particularly the children.
According to a rough estimate, more than 100 soda water products are producing and selling substandard drinks by misusing brand names of multinational companies.
Talking to this agency, Rizwan Abbas a citizen said administration has been limping to stop the production of spurious soft drinks by conducting raids and putting fines on factories.
However, it is not sufficient to prevent people from consuming low quality drinks because the owners of such factories caring little for the meager fines restart their business again, he said.
He said: “I am eye witness that the fake beverage factories have been established in the rural areas adjacent to cities in rented houses to avoid attention of the authorities”.
An official of Food Authority said, “We can only fine such people. There is no law under which we can stop the people from producing soft drinks after being found guilty,” the officials said.
He added that there were no water filtration plants inside these factories and contaminated water is often used in preparation of soft drinks.
Knowing well that these products were unhygienic, the retailers selling them just to earn big profit and do not care for the people’s health, he added.
He said bottles used for filling these beverages were also hazardous for human health, as the owners of such factories re-use the bottles collected by scavengers, adding, such bottles also cause various diseases among the consumers.
Since the start of the summer season, many samples of various beverages had been collected and sent to the laboratory for test and cases had been registered against such people, including factory owners and sellers and sealed some so called factories.
Samina Ikram, a mother said his five years old son, got through infection twice a month and when he inquired, his son told me that he drunk cold drink from our street shop and he know that he was selling standard beverages. “I complained the concerned authorities but in vain as they just imposed nominal fine on him which is not enough to stop such activity”.
She suggested that government should introduce strict rules to control the illegal business of sub standard beverages otherwise these criminals would continue to play with the health of poor people as well as children.
Dr Ikram Ul Haq, an expert said even a quality soft drink did not have any good effects on the human body and the use of substandard cold drink is quite frightening. Children were the largest section of consumers of cold drinks. Their body gets attacked pretty easily.
He said if a person consumed one cold drink each day then it with resulted in hyperglycemia, cancer, fat, indigestion and over the time people would become heart patients.