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NTT residents in border areas receive clean water aid
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For a better life – The second assistant of the Belu administration’s regional secretariat, Marsel Mau Beta (second from right) and East Tasufeto district head Patrisius (lef), together with Procter & Gamble's (P&G) Asia corporate social responsibility director Victoria Great (center), P&G's home products Indonesia director Nararya Soeprapto (left) and ChildFund Indonesia representative Chandra Dethan (third from right) and P&G's brand ambassador Susan Bachtiar (third from left), attend the the first anniversary of the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program in Silawan village, Belu, East Nusa Tenggara, on Tuesday. (thejakartapost.com/Djemi Amnifu)
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pproximately 8,000 families in Belu and Malaka, two East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) regencies, which borders with Timor Leste, have received clean water supplies through the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program, a Procter & Gamble (P&G) non-profit initiative that will be conducted for three years from 2015 to 2018.
“Our visit to Silawan village was to commemorate one year of the extending of our clean water aid and to celebrate the achieving of our 10 billion liters of water delivery target through this program,” P&G’s Asia corporate social responsibility director Victoria Great said in Silawan village in East Tasifeto district, Belu regency, last week.
Victoria said the company started the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program in 2014, cooperating with more than 150 partners and organizations. The program was aimed at increasing public awareness on the importance of ensuring people’s adequate access to clean and drinking water, she went on.
Victoria said P&G celebrated this achievement together with its partners, comprising civil society groups, government institutions and the private sector in 20 countries, including Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa and the UK.
“We are proud to continue to improve the life of families in Indonesia using our innovation, namely P&G’s water purifying technology. We express our thanks to the ChildFund and the Indonesian government’s support in helping us bring clean water to families who need it,” she said.
Victoria said what the most important thing from the program was, clean water could increase people’s health, helping children to be able to go to school and giving better economic opportunities for their families.
The second assistant of the Belu administration’s regional secretariat, Marsel Mau Meta, who represented Belu regent Willibrodus Lay, appreciated P&G and the ChildFund for helping fulfill the clean water needs of Belu residents.
Marsel said the Belu administration was developing drilled wells to meet the clean water needs of people in the regency. The Silawan village had five drilled wells and seven more wells would be built in the near future.
“In our long term target, we are in the process of building the Rotiklot dam,” said Marsel, adding that the project would be fully funded by the State Budget.
P&G’s home products Indonesia director Nararya Soeprapto said P&G had a commitment to increase and touch the lives of families in NTT through the Children’s Safe Drinking Water program.
“We are happy to be here today to mark one year of the journey of our program in Silawan village and get an opportunity to meet with local people,” said Nararya.
“P&G is sharing the power of clean water to increase health, to continue education and to help create economic opportunities for children and families in this area.”
For Silawan village, Nararya said, P&G Indonesia would facilitate the delivery of 65 million liters of clean water for 8,000 heads of families during the period of 2015-2018. “We will continue to review the clean water aid program in our long term plans.”
Nararya said as part of P&G’s commitment to its two programs, namely the Children’s Safe Drinking Water and P&G’s Berbagi Asa, the company would continue to promote the power of clean water and work to achieve its next target: Providing 200 million liters of clean water for Indonesian people by 2020.
Nararya said that for more than 10 years, P&G had provided around 16 million sachets of water purifier or equal to 160 million liters of clean water for its natural disaster assistance activities in Indonesia, such as during the tsunami in Aceh, earthquakes in Yogyakarta and Padang (West Sumatra), eruptions of Mount Merapi and annual flooding in Jakarta.
Meanwhile, ChildFund Indonesia representative Chandra Dethan said the non-profit organization warmly welcomed the opportunity to cooperate with P&G in the clean water program.
“This is in line with our efforts to expand partnerships in finding solutions to tackle challenges, which affect children’s development. Only by involving all stakeholders, including the private sector, we can find an effective and sustainable solution to realizing children’s prosperity,” said Chandra.
Silawan resident Maria Goreti, one of beneficiaries of the program, said previously, she had to walk up to two kilometers to get clean water to meet her family’s daily needs. “[...] We also often had to queue and during the dry season, the water supply available was often not enough to meet the needs of all people,” she said.
With the P&G program, Maria said, the clean water needs of her family could be fulfilled with small sachets of water purifier distributed by the ChildFund. To get safe drinking water, she just needed to take water from the river and put the water purifier powder into it.
“We want to say thanks to all parties who have cooperated to help our community [achieve] a better life. When children and families get access to clean water and proper sanitation, their life can change,” said Maria, a mother of two. (ebf)
