`Water not merely public property'

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Legislators staved off public demand for a revision of the water resource bill, which opens the doors wide to the privatization of water, insisting that the natural resource had economic value.

Erman Suparno, chairman of House Commission IV overseeing natural resources, among other things, said water had both social and economic functions.

He maintained that people's daily need for water would be given priority, but once it was met, any surplus water should be managed by private firms.

"To some extent, we need private firms, so what we should do is limit their ownership of the water sector," he said at a seminar on the water resources bill held on Wednesday by the Science and Technology Writers Society (Mapiptek).

Other speakers included the senior operation officer of the World Bank Office in Indonesia, George Soraya, former environment minister Sonny Keraf and Director General of Water Resources at the Ministry of Settlement and Regional Infrastructure Roestam Sjarief.

Erman said private firms' control of the water sector should be limited to a maximum 49 percent, thus allowing state-owned enterprises to retain the lion's share of the sector.

He said private control of the tap water business, for example in Jakarta, where the local government's share stood at only 10 percent, needed reevaluating.

"We must also review the mineral water business, following reports that it has caused farms located near those plants to run out of water," he said.

However, he said restrictions on the maximum control of the water sector by private firms would not be spelled out in the bill, saying the spirit of the draft bill already guaranteed that the economic benefits of water would not detract from its social function.

The water resource bill has met opposition from scholars, non- governmental organizations and farmers' associations for allowing the privatization of the water sector.

Critics say privatization would deprive the general public of access to water.

Soraya of the World Bank suggested that the issue of water management focus on how to provide all people with access to clean water, and that it could either be state- or private-run.

He said it was obvious that the government alone could not afford to finance projects worth billions of dollars to meet the nation's demand for clean water.