Water is going down the drain: Union leader

Damar Harsanto and Leo Wahyudi S, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Over 40,000 users of state-owned water utility PT PAM Jaya's tap water have been connected to the mains illegally by corrupt company staff, a senior union official revealed on Thursday.

"Twenty thousand are in western part of the city, while the other 20,000 users are in the east," said Zainal Abidin, the head of the PAM Jaya labor union.

Zainal blamed the high number of illegal connections on the absence of mains supplying water to the areas in which the consumers' lived coupled with the poor services provided by the two water utilities in Jakarta.

"Many residents cannot wait for the long process of obtaining a new water connection. They then seek the help of corrupt staff members to connect them up to the mains," Zainal said.

Due to the illegal connections, Zainal estimated that the state was suffering massive losses of at least Rp 1.4 billion a month as every consumer used an average of 20 cubic meters of water per month, while tap water was priced at Rp 1,800 per cubic meter. "That's excluding the new connection fee which ranges from Rp 85,000 to Rp 340,000 depending on the customer's locality," he said.

PAM Jaya has two foreign partners, Britain's PT Thames PAM Jaya (TPJ) and French-owned PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja). Thames supplies about 324,000 customers mostly in the eastern part of the city, while Palyja serves 300,000 customers in the western part of Jakarta.

Separately, both Palyja and TPJ admitted that the poor water supply in the city was due partly to illegal connections and staff members on the take.

TPJ spokeswoman Mia Korompis Dwianto said that consumers' lack of awareness made them willing to accept such irregularities.

"Corrupt staff offer faster service by providing an illegal connection," Mia said, adding that they exploited customers who were in need of quick service.

She pointed to North Jakarta as an example, where some people had suffered disruption to their water supplies due to damaged and vandalized valves in the supply network.

If new customers were patient and were prepared to wait for at least two weeks for a new connection, they would not be so easily targeted by the corrupt staff, she said.

Palyja spokeswoman Maria Sidabutar said that the company was simultaneously monitoring pipe leaks and trying to detect illegal connections.

"We have succeeded so far in reducing losses from the irregularities from 60 percent to around 47 percent now," Maria said.

In response to the complaints, both companies admitted that they had fallen short of providing better service and a quality product due to the poor infrastructure they had inherited.

TPJ says that in 1997 the total length of the network stood at 4,400 kilometers with 324,073 clients in the eastern and northern part of Jakarta.

Both TPJ and Palyja, however, lamented the fact that the city water mains used by the two companies were in poor condition due to age.

"Only a public campaign on the people's need for water will be able to raise the level of responsibility among consumers," Mia said.