More than 80 percent of Lebanon's potable water doesn't meet health standards, Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan revealed after meeting with Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, who has been waging a health campaign for over the past year.
"We are seeking to organize the water sector in Lebanon and the [relevant authority] will test water samples and equipment provided by companies selling bottled water," Hajj Hassan told reporters.
Abu Faour also announced that most of the tested samples taken from unlicensed water companies "didn't conform to the required standards."
"We gave them several grace periods to rectify their conditions but by the beginning of the new year we will shut down all those violating [health] standards and didn't legalize its situation," Abu Faour concluded.
The health minister had issued previously several warnings to unlicensed water companies selling bottled drinkable water in order to rectify their situation, saying that the water they supplied was contaminated and carried traces of sewage.
The warnings came ahead of a garbage crises that gripped Lebanon since mid-July, mixing rainwater with trash mounds in Beirut and Mount Lebanon.
There are fears that as rainwater mixes with trash and flows into sewers, contaminated tap water will spread diseases such as cholera.
The government also endorsed earlier this month a controversial plan to export garbage solving the five-month-old crisis. (The Daily Star)
PHOTO: Gallons seen at a water supplying company closed down by the health ministry in north Lebanon for health and legal violations, Monday, December 7, 2015.
CREDIT: The Daily Star/Stringer.