The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will hold a high-level official meeting on Wednesday in the presence of the mayor and state police after packaged mineral water company, lodges, complaint with KMC against unlicensed vendors misusing their brand name.

The civic body health department has been conducting drives against vendors selling contaminated packaged water that is suspected to be the cause of the recent diarrhoea outbreak in the city. It has come to light that several unlicensed vendors indulge in this trade of selling packaged water using brand names of registered and widely recognised companies.

The source of water for such vendors are mostly ponds or handtubewells. The member mayor in council (MMIC) health, Atin Ghosh said, “An official from the packaged mineral water company, named Sandip Shankar approached us complaining that several vendors have been misusing their brand name and selling packaged water in the market for the last two years.”

It is mostly their five and twenty litre containers that are being misused. The company previously had a rule where five rupees were lessened on returning the containers after use.

However, later, the company discarded that rule on realising that reuse of such containers could pave way for a risk of contamination from germs or bacteria.

In recent times it had been observed, especially in hospital areas the shop owners encourage people with a promise of five rupees return, on giving back the containers after use so it could be refilled and sold in the market again.

“The officials told us that they had approached the police and held meetings with food safety commission officials as they themselves don’t have the authority to crack down on such vendors,” Mr Atin Ghosh said.

Speaking on the initiative that will be taken by the civic body in response to the complaint, the MMIC explained, “ We have informally collected samples of that specific brand of mineral water from the retailers and will now visit their production units to collect samples from there with the help of the food safety officers.

Factory produced samples will then be compared to the ones collected from the retailers to verify the claims of the officials.”