JEDDAH, 4 May 2004 — Families in a building in the Mushrifah district have been sold dirty water which they say is making them ill.
The mostly Filipino families suffer stomach pains and diarrhea as a result of drinking the water, sold to them by a water distributor under a fake label.
Bernie Villorente has been suffering from stomach upsets for some time, and now his two children also have diarrhea and stomach pains.
“I thought it was normal at first, but I became alarmed when it kept happening all the time,” Villorente told Arab News.
“I am worried because my children are frequently affected by stomach illnesses,” said Mrs. Macabanding, from the same building. “My kids got diarrhea for no apparent reason.”
Another resident noticed that the Al-Ain brand water residents were customarily drinking tasted different. He asked the building’s concierge to bring a six-gallon bottle of the brand.
When the concierge brought the bottle, the label read A-Ain but the plastic seal was marked “Al Jazira.”
Nidal Abdul Kareem, a water division manager, in a letter to Delta Marketing Co., the distributor of Al-Ain water, wrote: “Al Jazira filling station and other filling stations in the streets are not complying with municipality health standards.
“They fill our bottles with unhealthy water and distribute them among the houses and gain a high profit without even fixing their own sticker on the bottles,” he said.
“We already complained about them several times to the municipality and to the Ministry of Commerce,” Kareem said.
He added the company in reply sent educational flyers to residents explaining how to recognize genuine Al-Ain water bottles.
A copy of the complaint, dated April 12, 2004 has been sent to Ahmad Abdulrahman, Al Jazira general manager, but no reply has been received. Several attempts to reach him by phone proved futile.
