No chlorine shortage as of Friday, Water Board officials say

Despite allegations of a chlorine shortage at the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) for water purification, officials said that as of Friday, no shortages existed.

"We have sufficient rolling stocks so there's absolutely no need to worry," Eng. S. G. G. Rajkumar of the NWSDB told the Sunday Times. Rolling stocks include physical stocks and stocks in transit.

The NWSDB requires between 200-250 metric tonnes of chlorine for a month and is supplied by Paranthan Chemicals Company Limited. Chlorine is distributed in cylinders of 90kgs and 68kgs; 75% of the NWSDB's requirement, for the smaller processing plants, is catered to with 68kgs cylinders.

"Plants across the island have stocks in store and so do we," said NWSDB General Manager G.A.J. Wijesundara. According to him, Paranthan Chemicals Company Limited imported their liquid chlorine and caustic soda from Bangladesh and India.

While inside sources told the Sunday Times that the NWSDB only had enough chlorine for water purification for just a week more, Mr. Wijesundara assured that the processes for sufficient stocks for the next six months of the NSWDB's chlorine requirement were functioning smoothly. The loading of part of an 18 container order began yesterday and would reach the NWSDB post-processing, by June 24. The bottleneck that had occurred over the past couple of weeks resulted from a deadly fire in a container depot in Sitakunda, Bangladesh one of the suppliers' main loading decks, on June 4.

The fire took four days to douse and took many lives and resulted in a series of explosions which may have been caused by dangerous chemicals stored at the depot.

The disaster had caused a severe holdup of the shipping processes of the chemical traders for multiple countries along the shipping routes.

"Sri Lanka in particular faced about a two- week delay in their usual deliveries, but this is no cause for concern because we have enough stocks for water purification," Mr. Wijesundara said.

Storage of the volatile gas was a precarious business since stocks expire within 45 days, begin causing rust on valves and could cause damage to property. Moreover, Paranthan Chemicals was entirely owned by the Treasury of Sri Lanka.

"We have not had any issues with access to dollars because we planned our payments and made allocations proactively at the beginning of the issues." Tenders for 120 containers of chlorine over the next eight months were also opened. Paranthan Chemicals had an annual dollar requirement of approximately US$ 300,000 according to the general manager and this had been exclusively allocated.