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arthina Walilo, a 42-year-old housewife from Hubikiak district in mountainous Jayawijaya regency, Papua, said she remembered how hard it was to get decent service from her nearest community health center (puskesmas).

“Back then, it felt like the reception desk opened at noon and closed at noon [actual daily operations were open for about an hour]. It was a similar case for its laboratory, as it was frequently not attended by a nurse. [People] who had waited a week needed to wait another month to have their blood samples drawn,” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Realizing she and other local residents have the right for better access to health services, Marthina, better known as Mama Tin, oftentimes voiced her complaints to the Hom-Hom Puskesmas, but to no avail.

It took years until the puskesmas listened to her complaints and started making changes.

From 2014 onwards, the Hom-Hom Puskesmas, the only public health center in the district, has begun providing better services, now from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The key, according to the health center’s head, Asalaus Alua, is allowing greater public participation in the puskesmas’ management.

The health center now provides simple pictorial posters to help its patients, mostly illiterate, understand the health service facility. They are also given cards featuring sad and smiley faces to rate the services they are getting.

“Initially, we were against such complaints or interventions from the patients as we felt we knew what was best for them. But now we realize that allowing them to speak out about our services can help us improve,” Asalaus said, adding that locals also have a say in the puskesmas’ budgeting plan.

The Hom Hom health center is an outlier in Papua, and also perhaps nationwide.

Local public services continue to perform poorly, as reflected in a 2015 survey by the Ombudsman, which oversees complaints in the public service.

In the survey, only three provinces out of the 33 provinces it surveyed provided good public services, while only 6 regencies and municipalities got a score deemed good, out of 114 areas studied.

Papua, one of the poorest provinces in the country, did not fare well in the study.

Gabriel Yustianti, a doctor at the Jayawijaya Health Agency, said what the Hom Hom health center should be able to be replicated elsewhere. He said he would apply the center’s “greater public participation” approach in three other health centers in Jayawijaya.

The people living near the health center had received assistance from US Agency for International Development (USAID) program “Kinerja”, which aimed to raise people’s participation in public services.

The Kinerja program ended its six-year project in 79 districts and municipalities in Aceh, Papua, East Java, West Kalimantan and South Sulawesi earlier this year.

Several local governments, which were assisted by Kinerja, had received awards in recognition of their improved services, like in 2014 when Aceh Singkil regency in Aceh, Barru and North Luwu in South Sulawesi were finalists for the United Nations Public Service Awards.

Muhammad Imanuddin of the public service policy and system management unit at the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry said his office supported the idea of replicating the best practices of performing public services, including that demonstrated at the Hom Hom health center.

However, Kinerja head Elke Rapp said it was essential to have all the stakeholders involved in public services “to be on the same page” and to consider different approaches that were more socially and culturally appropriate.