Water shortage keeps many awake

JAKARTA (JP): At about two o'clock in the morning, Indrawan and dozens, or even hundreds, of other people in the neighborhood woke up, jumped out of bed and went straight to the bathroom to fill in their water tank.

"For a few months, before I slept, I always set the alarm so that I could get up on time," Indrawan, a resident of Taman Surya II housing complex in Kalideres, West Jakarta, said.

The supply of tap water in his area flowed only between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.

"But about a week ago, the water did not came out at all," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

So, Indrawan, who lives in Block E, went to his friend Henny in Block C, who has access to an artesian well.

But Indrawan still considered himself lucky as many other people had to buy water offered by certain employees of the city's joint-venture tap water company, PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja), or other vendors.

At first, the water cost Rp 15,000 per cubic meter, but then it rose to Rp 20,000, and then Rp 50,000, according to Indrawan.

Enough is enough. So, the residents became angry and last weekend they staged a demonstration to protest the water shortage. They even took hostage two water tankers belonging to Palyja.

"It worked. Now we don't have to pay for the water. We just give them some money voluntarily," Indrawan, who works in a private company in Bekasi, said.

Water shortages are actually a familiar problem for many residents in the Taman Surya housing estate.

He said that the residents, represented by the neighborhood chief, met representatives of Palyja several times. The company once said that there was a problem with a water distributor in Tangerang, then it said that there was some work being done to the water pipe network.

Henny said that when she moved to the housing estate three months ago, she decided to join several other residents to build their own piped water network so that they could obtain water from an artesian well. The well used to be managed by the now- defunct housing developer, she said.

"I don't want to have to get up at 2 a.m. to catch the tap water," she said.

Even though she never used the water from Palyja, Henny said that every month she had to pay a subscription fee of about Rp 19,000.

Public relations manager of Palyja, Maria Sidabutar, said that of Tuesday, angry residents still held two of the company's 13 water tankers.

"I do hope they will soon release them because it will affect their own water supply," she said.

She said that thousands of cubic meters of free water had been supplied to the residents, and that the new pipe network had started to operate on Tuesday morning.

"I have received reports that the residents have started to obtain water, even though the supply has not been normal," she said, adding that the water is expected to reach all residents within this week.

But that does not necessarily mean that all residents will be able to get water in the morning. Many, like Indrawan, will still have to wake up before dawn to catch the water.

There are 2,500 residents in Taman Surya housing who are subscribers of Palyja.

Asked whether Palyja would compensate those who suffered due to the water shortage or would refund their subscription fees, Maria said that the issue would be discussed case by case.(sim)