Clean water still a luxury for many Jakartans
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
For Lieswati, 27, clean water is truly a luxury as every night she must stay up to fill several buckets and a bath tub with water for the family's daily needs due to the poor tap water supply.
"The flow is abysmal during the day as a result of the low pressure. The pressure only gets better at night -- until about 6 a.m.," said the resident of a crowded area in Kota, West Jakarta.
Lieswati grumbled that sometimes the water was cut off, forcing her to spend more money on buying water from a pushcart water vendor.
"Last week, for instance, the water was off all day long. I had to spend more than Rp 7,000 (85 U.S. cents) on a couple of buckets of water I bought from the water vendor," she complained.
According to Lieswati, residents in her neighborhood have no other option but to rely on the poor tap water service.
"We simply cannot use ground water as the wells are highly polluted as a result of being too close to the septic tanks," explained Lieswati.
Meanwhile, Anwar S, 30, a resident of Halim, East Jakarta, who also complained about the poor tap water service, is able to use ground water.
"But, I have to pay more for the electricity used by the water jet pump, which is much higher than the water charges," said Anwar.
Before using the pump, Anwar used to pay Rp 40,000 on water charges and Rp 70,000 on electricity, but since he started using the pump, he has to pay Rp 15,000 for the water and Rp 120,000 for the electricity.
Worse still, Anwar said, the tap water quality was getting worse, and the water had a bad smell.
"I am considering purchasing bottled water for cooking and drinking purposes," said Anwar.
Some residents of Cempaka Putih, Central Jakarta, and Kayu Manis and Rawabunga, Jatinegara, both in East Jakarta, also expressed similar complaints.
Problems with tap water supply and quality are old ones for Jakartans. The management of piped water supplies here has been delegated to two private sector firms, Thames Pam Jaya and PT Pam Lyonnaise Jaya, since February, 1998, after it was taken out of the hands of the reportedly corruption-riddled state-owned enterprise, PAM Jaya. TPJ, which is a subsidiary of Britain's Thames Water International, serves customers to the east of the Ciliwung River, while Palyja, a subsidiary of France's ONDEO (formerly Lyonnaise des Eaux), serves customers to the west of the river.
Last April, tap water charges were increased by some 40 percent, but many still complain about poor service.
Palyja's spokeswoman, Maria Sidabutar, explained that her company had gathered together customers in four areas of the city, Central Jakarta, West Jakarta, North Jakarta and South Jakarta, following the water charge increases.
"We met with them (the customers) to listen to their complaints and suggestions so that we can improve our service," said Maria.
Maria blamed the poor tap water quality on the low quality of the unprocessed water from the Jati Luhur reservoir in West Java, coupled with the decrepit pipe network.
According to Maria, Palyja had invested Rp 644 billion as of March last year on, among other things, replacing old pipes (490 kilometers out of 4,100 kilometers of old pipe), and expanding the network (780 kilometers).
"Palyja estimates that more than Rp 1.2 trillion will be needed to improve the water supply over the next five years," said Maria.