Jamshedpur, Sept. 1: When the recess bell rang at the Ram Krishna Mission School in Bistupur, the children thronged the gates of the school to buy snacks from vendors.

Every vendor has separate buckets to store water for drinking and washing vessels. Although the majority of the schoolchildren do not take water from the vendors to drink, the latter uses the water to clean plates. The vendors invariably use the same water to wash vessels over and over again.

“It is impossible for us to carry large jars of water. Neither it is possible for us to fetch water all the time. So this is the best option available to us,” a vendor said.

Enquiries by The Telegraph revealed that most of the vendors or small hotel owners of the city collect drinking water from public taps in market places. The quality of drinking water that they stock in their push-carts or hotels is good. But the containers where they store the water are not clean.

Some owners of small hotels conceded that they clean the water containers only once in the morning. “Our containers are very big. It is impossible for us to clean the containers twice or thrice a day,” they said.

Uday Prakash, who runs a hotel in in Jugsalai, said: “The food inspector visits my hotel twice a year. He collects a bottle of drinking water from the tubewell from which we provide water to our customers. We do not use the water provided by the municipality since it is of poor quality.”

Some of the hotel owners of Jugsalai said that they send their workers to fetch water from taps where Tata Steel provides the water. “Each morning some of my workers go to the company area to bring water. There is no other alternative before us,” they said.

The hotelier said he was not sure whether the food inspector sends the samples of water for a laboratory test.

Food inspector C.D. Singh told The Telegraph that he collects food and water samples from small hotels and vendors doing business in the Jugsalai area.

The food inspector said: “I am supposed to retire in three months. Hence, there is hardly any need to carry out work sincerely. I have stopped collecting samples.”Another food inspector, Mahesh Pandey, is supposed to test the drinking water from the hotels falling under the Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC).

But the main problem with Pandey is that he is in charge of three other districts, apart from East Suinghbhum.

“Pandey does not get sufficient time to carry out regular check in hotels falling within his jurisdiction,” sources in the civil surgeon’s office said.

“He has to devote time in other districts also,” added an official of the civil surgeon’s office.