The Padang city PDAM tap water company, which supplies around 60 percent of the city's drinking water, has been totally paralyzed due to the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck West Sumatra province last week.
As a result, residents lack clean water for their daily needs, such as for washing and bathing, while the PDAM and the public works office have dispatched water tankers to a number of places for drinking and cooking uses.
However, not all city residents have access to the service.
A resident in Falamboyan, Sri Setyawati, 42, said she was forced to get water from her well-owning neighbor and elder sister who live 2 kilometers from her.
"Every time I ask for water from my neighbor for cooking, I have to hide my shame. I obviously could not ask for much water, especially to clean the toilet," she told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Sri, who lives with her husband and two children, including her elderly parents, depend on the PDAM as their only source of water because the family does not own a well.
She now plans to build her own well but said it was currently difficult to find workers to dig the well.
"We are forced to take a bath once a day at my sister's or at my husband's office," said Sri, a lecturer at the Andalas University in Padang.
"We are obviously ashamed because we have been doing it for the past seven days. I don't know what else to do."
She said the emergency tanks provided by PDAM were not available at her housing complex.
Residents have been forced to take baths in the river flowing through the city due to the water crisis.
Every morning and afternoon hundreds of people bathe and do their washing in the river despite the poor quality of the river water, as it has been polluted by domestic waste.
Padang PDAM managing director Azhar Latif said water supplies had been totally cut due to the quake, as 60 percent of the pipe network was broken and the Gunung Pangilun water processing plant, the main supplier of drinking water for Padang, was badly damaged.
Azhar said to meet the water needs of city residents, his office had brought in tanker trucks from a number of cities and regencies in West Sumatra as well as neighboring provinces, such as Aceh, Jambi and South Sumatra.
He added some of the tankers had been placed at hospitals and other vital facilities, such as the Minangkabau International Airport due to the total cut in water supplies to the city.
He said a number of small-scale clean water processing units, provided by PT Cipta Karya state-owned construction company, had also been operated, including desalination units from Australian relief Agency AusAid.
However, he said the supplies remained inadequate to meet people's needs because water from the tankers was intended only for drinking and cooking and not for bathing, washing and bathroom needs.
