Jakarta should learn about water from Cambodia

Unlike Jakarta and other cities in Indonesia, the tap water situation in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh is improving, as the state-owned water company is very hard working and dedicated to providing water to all citizens.

In Phnom Penh, according to state-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), 75 percent of its over 1 million population is connected to the tap water lines thanks to the company's massive expansion launched since the end of civil war in 1993.

Another astonishing figure is that PPWSA has cut down illegal connections to less than 5 customers last year from 300 in 1993, and water prices are at less than half of that of Jakarta, at 14 U.S. cents per cubic meter. Over 78 percent of its customers pay their bills on time. Some 4,700 poor families have also been connected to PPWSA's tap water service with a special installment payment.

PPWSA is on schedule to make a profit by 2005, and has an estimated capacity to supply over 1.5 million people in the capital.

As a comparison, in Jakarta, only a small percentage of the population is connected to the tap water system. Leakages due to illegal connections and poor infrastructure reaches almost 50 percent, water fees stand at Rp 2,700 (30 U.S. cents) per cubic meter and rising, and the two private water providers have been unable to make any profits so far.

Ek Sonn Chan, General Manager of PPWSA since 1993 admitted that it was difficult to expand the tap water distribution to meet the rising demand at first as the tap water infrastructure was obsolete, and existing customers were unwilling to pay their water bills, so leakage and theft was rampant.

"It was a tough challenge for our teams to improve the poor water service just after the conflict period ended in our country and we started undergoing a peaceful era," he said.

But PPWSA was fortunate as the Cambodian Government gave its full support to the expansion program and it could concentrate on autonomously managing its funds to improve water services, Sonn Chan said.

One of the most important support efforts was when the government agreed to raise tap water charges for customers twice between 1993 and 2002. The increase was actually expected to be three times during that period.

Door-to-door campaigning was carried out to ask the existing customers to pay their water bills, to require illegal customers to get legal connections with PPWSA and to make offers to potential customers to connect to PPWSA's system.

With a relatively lower price, people started to connect to PPWSA rather than getting water from private vendors that could sell it at 10 times the price of PPWSA water.

-- Moch. N. Kurniawan