Consumers criticize PAM Jaya
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
About 1,600 customers of city-owned tap water firm PD Pam Jaya complained on Tuesday that they had not received an adequate water supply for three months, although they had paid their monthly water bills.
Around 100 representatives of customers from Marunda, North Jakarta, met with City Council Commission B for economic affairs, asking the councillors to help persuade the tap water firm to supply the water immediately.
"There are PAM Jaya water trucks that are supplying water to houses every day, but their supplies do not meet our needs. So we have to buy additional water from vendors," said Tuminah, 50, one of the representatives.
Tuminah said she spent between Rp 10,000 (US$1.22) to Rp 15,000 per day to buy water from the vendors in order to meet the needs of her five-member family.
She said she still paid the Rp 30,000 fixed monthly charge to British PT Thames Pam Jaya (TPJ), Pam Jaya's business partner that serves customers in the eastern part of Jakarta, including Marunda subdistrict.
Only two trucks of water with a 4,500-liter load came daily to their houses with water for the residents of community units II, III and IX in Marunda, she said.
Rika, 20, another Marunda resident, said the supply from TPJ had been inconsistent for the past three months.
"The water supply has actually been disrupted since last year. We've never experienced an adequate supply," Rika said at a hearing with Commission B.
Besides Marunda residents, thousands of PAM Jaya customers in the subdistricts of Kali Baru, Rawa Badak and Cilincing, all in North Jakarta, reportedly suffer from a disrupted water service.
Admitting to their poor service, PAM Jaya promised to supply water to the residents for free. The firm asked the residents to bear with the problem until the end of this month, because the piping network construction in the area was not yet complete.
Marunda residents were not happy with the promise, as the had often heard such promises before.
"They have promised many times that the water supply would go back to normal soon, but they've never kept their promises," Rika told The Jakarta Post.
At the hearing, TPJ Communications and External Relations Rhamses Simanjuntak claimed that the problem had occurred because the areas' network capacity could only accommodate 400 houses, but the firm had to supply water to about 1,600 houses.
Separately, Tubagus Haryo Karbyanto, a lawyer from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), said the Marunda case showed that consumers were always in a weak position.
He said in any agreement between two parties, there were always articles that spelled out the obligation of each party.
"But if the consumers want take legal recourse against PAM Jaya, it is expensive and will be a long process," Tubagus said, adding that negotiations might be a cheaper way to resolve the problem.
The compromise, he added, could be for PAM Jaya to supply the water to customers free-of-charge for the duration of time that the residents had not received supplied.
Besides tap water customers in North Jakarta, millions of residents across the city who use artesian wells have reportedly suffered water shortages because of the current dry season.
The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency predicted that the dry season would last up to next month.