Water is going down the drain: Union leader

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.