TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
No overhaul in sight for aging tap-water pipes
The liquid coming out of Fanny’s faucets these days may still be called tap water by the company that delivers it, but it sure doesn’t look — or smell — like tap water
Change Size
T
he liquid coming out of Fanny’s faucets these days may still be called tap water by the company that delivers it, but it sure doesn’t look — or smell — like tap water.
“Now I buy bottled drinking water everyday because I am afraid that drinking boiled tap water is no longer safe,” Fanny, a resident of Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Fanny, 51, is just one of millions of Jakarta’s residents forced to pay high costs to obtain potable water.
The city’s dysfunctional tap-water piping system, largely made up of old, rusting or damaged iron pipes, pollutes clean water pumped from water treatment plants to homes.
According to Firdaus Ali, a hydrology graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the United States, most tap water pipes in the city need to be repaired or replaced.
“High levels of pollution occur when the pipes are old and leaking, causing the water inside it to mix with chemicals from shed pipes, salt water, sewage and solid waste,” he said.
There are 5,200 kilometers of water pipes beneath Jakarta. Most of the pipes are more than sixty years old.
PT Aetra Air Jakarta and PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja), two private tap water operators responsible for water distribution, claimed they had made major investments in fixing and replacing damaged pipes.
“Most of our investment goes into piping, the core problem of water distribution in Jakarta,” public relations manager PT Palyja Meyritha Maryanie told the Post.
Both companies claimed they had built 1,200 kilometers of new pipes and repaired 800 kilometers of pipes since 1998.
“We received little investment last year, only worth Rp 100 billion [US$10.8 million], which was still far from the targeted Rp 200 billion,” commissioner of Palyja Bernard Lafrogne said.
Firdaus, also a board member at the Jakarta Water Supply Regulator Body, explained that the city’s tap water operators had a 22 percent return on investment (ROI), the highest rate among tap water operators in the country.
A 2005 Ministerial Decree No. 23 limits the ROI for tap water operators at 10 percent.
“But they have the leverage to keep it constant at 22 percent because their ROI is regulated by the 1998 water concession contract,” he said.
The relatively high ROI means customers must pay more for their water, Firdaus said.
This was unfair, he continued, because there was no social or political commitment to improve tap water in the city, such as by repairing or replacing old pipes.
Director of the Amrta Water Institute for Literacy Nila Ardhianie criticized the water contract, saying that it ignored people living in slums and other poor areas.
“The investment in piping still ignores these groups because they don’t make returns on the investments,” she said, adding that as a consequence of this, tap water theft was rampant in such areas.
“How are we going to invest in expanding pipe coverage in the areas where there is insufficient water supply?” Meyritha of Palyja said, adding that the water companies only repaired pipes and built new ones in areas where water pressure was high and the quality of tap water was relatively good. (tsy)
