Nagapattinam, Jan. 7: As Tamil Nadu grapples with the curse of water, villagers have finally got a clean drop to drink from faraway Rajasthan.

The defence ministry?s mobile lab, which is based in Jodhpur and falls under the purview of the Defence Research Development Organisation, is providing clean water to tsunami-hit villages through its Nuclear Biological and Chemical Water Purification System.

The system, which uses the reverse osmosis process, has been fitted to an army truck and is essentially meant to provide potable water during defence operations.

The lab has been provided on the state government?s request and has travelled across three villages near Nagapattinam, converting raw water into potable water.

?Our system has a suction capacity of 7,000 litres and we can convert 3,000 litres of raw water per hour into drinkable water,? said Sushil Kumar, a scientist leading a seven-member team.

?We were in Sirdhur for two days and in Kameshwaram for a day before moving to the Akkaraipet coastal hamlet near here, one of the worst-affected areas,? he added.

At Akkaraipet, the lab has already supplied 26,000 litres of potable water, Kumar said.

Raw water from the village?s main water source is first chlorinated and then drawn into a ?flexible rubber pond which can hold up to 5,000 litres of water?, explained S.P. Bairwa, a technical officer with the lab. The treated water is then filled into tanks kept nearby, which were installed by the Unicef after the tsunami strike.

This is a tested technology and the chemicals required for purification, including alum, sodium hegzmeta phosphate, sodium meta-bisulphite and hydrochloric acid, are being sourced from Pondicherry, the scientists said.

In Akkaraipet, the lab has been parked in the centre of the village opposite the local Durga temple so that villagers have access to it.

?We provided the same service at Latur and Bhuj in Gujarat after the great earthquakes there? and spent 12 days at Erasama near Paradeep in Orissa after the super cyclone hit that state in 1999,? said Sridhar, a member of the team. ?We are only doing our duty and trying to help the people to the extent we can.?

Not only water, Rajasthan is also providing medical assistance to the state. A team of doctors from the Gandhi Vidhya Mandir Sardar Shar Deemed University is helping out in Akkaraipet.

However, Nagapattinam relief commissioner Vivek Harinarayan today said voluntary organisations and NGOs should avoid supplying medicines to relief camps.

?We are getting third-generation and fourth-generation antibiotics, the efficacy of which cannot be tested in Nagapattinam,? Harinarayan said, adding that this posed a ?huge logistical problem? as the medicines had to be sent to Thiruvarur town, 25 km from here.