Federal government sends 220 water purifiers to Rio Grande do Sul

Amid the scarcity of drinking water and restricted access to the public water supply service in Rio Grande do Sul, the federal government delivered this Wednesday (8) a total of 220 water purifiers purchased from donations. The equipment arrived on a Brazilian Air Force (FAB) flight that landed in Canoas, in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, and should be distributed to public shelters maintained by city halls. Around 70,000 people are housed in these spaces, a number that is expected to increase over the next few days.

According to the minister of the Presidency’s Social Communication Secretariat (Secom), Paulo Pimenta, one of the coordinators of the federal government’s response to the floods in the state, the purifiers were purchased by digital influencer Felipe Neto, from donations collected online, with support of First Lady Janja da Silva. The equipment was manufactured by the company PW Tech, from São Paulo.

“It is a very efficient and easy-to-use technology. And we brought 220 purifiers today. Each purifier has the capacity to purify 5 thousand liters of water per day. This will allow us to purify 1.1 million liters of water/day”, he stated Pimenta at a press conference, in Porto Alegre, to update information.

“The great use of the purifier is to provide drinking water for shelters that do not have drinking water. Most of the shelters can have drinking water. So, 220 purifiers, in our assessment, will be enough to meet the demand for drinking water in these shelters, which are concentrated, for the most part, here in the metropolitan region”, added the minister.

In https://twitter.com/felipeneto/status/1788273911060156564 on social media, Felipe Neto showed the boarding, arrival and assembly of the purifiers in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. The equipment was taken to the Civil Defense Operations Center in Porto Alegre and, from there, it is already being distributed to the final points where it will be used. Each purifier cost, according to Neto, a total of R$ 22 thousand, including kits maintenance and filters.

The government also reported that the FAB plane with the purifiers carried a new shipment of 25 tons of donated products, especially hygiene and cleaning items, diapers, geriatric diapers, absorbent pads, among others. With hundreds of thousands of homeless and displaced people, the expectation is that the demand for food, hygiene products and water will continue to rise.