Japanese-funded Water Treatment plant in Juba/photocredit, Moses Awan

The Managing Director of South Sudan Urban Water has said the recent changes in the taste and smell of water supply in the capital Juba is due to the use of two chemicals to improve its quality.

Yar Paul Kuol was responding to Mauna residents in Munuki Block of Juba town who alleged they were supplied with contaminated water early this week.

The locals reported changes in the taste, smell and color of the water.

“We received some complains from Hai Mauna regarding the water quality, specially the taste and the smell of the chlorine in the water,’ said Yar.

According to Yar, the changes were due to the use of aluminum sulfate and chlorine to treat a high turbidity caused by the recent heavy rains in Juba.

She said the treatment was scientifically done through the water treatment lab of the Urban Water Cooperation in Juba.

“But I want to inform the public that we have a lab and this lab does testing every day, and we implement the test result that informed us on how much chlorine we are supposed to use, so during the few last days there’s rains and these rains cause high turbidity in the water.

“So we need to use aluminum sulfate and then we use chlorine to kill the living organism on the water, these are the two chemicals that we are using

“We use them according to the standard of the World Health Organization (WHO) and also the medical council of South Sudan , we are using the standard. So when we use chlorine, we use chlorine to deal with those issues according to the lab tests,” she explains.