A pedestrian walks by a pushcart selling bottled water in downtown Ho Chi Minh City.

Bottled drinking water from producers suspended for health safety violations was still being sold on the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City - some contaminated with dangerous bacteria.

The HCMC Health Department inspected 57 of 326 bottled water producers between February 16 and March 28.

The department suspended 29 producers for violating regulations on safety and hygiene, 11 of which had produced water contaminated with bacteria.

Inspectors said they even found some products containing Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, which can cause dangerous infections and sepsis in humans.

An employee of Tran Thuan My Company in District 10 said the firm was still selling 18.9 liter bottles of water. The company had been suspended last week after inspectors had found their Avid brand products were contaminated with bacteria.

The staff member said the products they were selling were from a different batch and had contacted customers to inform them not to use the contaminated bottles.

However, an Avid bottle from the contaminated batch was still being used by a company in its office on Ba Hat Street, 100 meters away from the Tran Thuan My office.

The company said it had not been contacted about the contaminated bottle.

The The Xuong Company in District 8 makes the Demyr bottled water brand that was suspended last week. On Saturday, they said large quantities of 21-liter bottles were still available for VND7,500 (US$0.42) apiece.

Thuan Huy Company in District 1 was also found selling its Aguavida bottled water although it had been suspended since March 3.

Tam Dang Company - suspended since March 3 - said on Saturday they could distribute their Aquaphar bottled water with a promise to present a certificate of safety and hygiene they had acquired this month.

Blue bottled water produced by Van Tai Company in District 6, suspended last Tuesday, was also being sold on Kinh Duong Vuong Street last Saturday.

Too cheap to be good

Le Nhu Ai, director of Saigon Pure Water Company (SAPUWA) said it was impossible to hygienically produce a 20-liter bottle to sell at the going price of VND7,500.

Purified water must be sold for between VND1,000 (5.6 US cents) and VND1,500 (8.5 US cents) per liter to make a profit, he said.

“Small-sized producers just take the bottles back and fill them from the pump to sell, but it normally takes more than VND20 billion ($1.12 million) to invest in a system to produce safe drinking water,” he said.

He said small producers couldn’t afford to buy a water purifying system that entails filtering cations and anions, solid impurities and metal elements; treating odor and color; destroying bacteria under ultra-violet (UV), and ozone treatment.

The workers also have to obey hygiene standards, he said.

Strict measures

Le Truong Giang, deputy director of the HCMC Health Department, said the suspended producers would face stricter penalties if they continued to make and sell their products.

He also said local authorities and market watchdog agencies were responsible for inspecting and destroying all tainted water in the market.

The department director, Nguyen Van Chau, said they would allow the breaching producers to resume production after inspections of their facilities showed they were safe.

However, the official said it was difficult to manage all the producers, because the tests were time consuming.

The department inspectors could only revoke certificates of safety and hygiene if customers were poisoned from their products, he said.

Hanoi inspections

Nguyen Viet Cuong, chief inspector of the Hanoi Health Department estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of all the 243 bottled water producers in Hanoi violated hygiene criteria, but the department had only suspended four producers during inspections conducted in the last three weeks.

None of those were suspended for Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria contamination but their production facilities were “very dirty,” Cuong said.

The capital’s Center for Preventive Health had found 10 from the total of 57 samples that were too alkali, the official said, adding that they banned the offending batches but had not suspended the factories.

Source: TT, TN