An alternative to bottled water for our ZEP students? by Meghna Raghoobar

It is with a feeling of relief that I am writing this article today, yet there is always a room for improvement. My mom works in a school, and I am fully aware that in the past, students did not have so many varieties of menus for lunch. We now have 15 menus for veg and non-veg for our students from ZEP. It’s indeed an advancement which I personally salute.

However, I am quite surprised with the number of bottled water that will be given to the students on a yearly basis. Let us take the X amount of ZEP students multiply by X amount of school days. That’s a lot for a greener Mauritius. What about the ‘eye-sore’ for our tourism industry ? The destruction of our marine eco-system? The health of our kids ?

In line with the objectives of the Tap Water Revolution Project, moving forward, my proposition is that The Ministry of Education, The Ministry of Environment and The Ministry of Health and Well-being join hands with NGOs and the Private Sector to ensure that we do things holistically by:

• Installing 3–5 filtered water fountains per school compound (depending on the amount of students we have per school)
• Providing each student with a ‘good quality’ re-usable bottle
• Provide sensitization campaign for students and parents on the why of the filtered water fountains and re-usable bottle (hence the need to take care of both)

If we implement the above in the next 5-years in all public school compounds, I believe that Mauritius would have partially met the objective of SDG 6 : Clean Water and Sanitation.

P. Meghna Raghoobar