W

hile the government has prioritized the development of adequate water and sanitation infrastructure in its policy agenda, budgetary allocations especially at the regency and municipality level for the sector remain below the desired levels.

A limited budget is one of the barriers that obstructs efforts to accelerate the availability of sanitation and water facilities in the regions.

This fact was revealed during the 2017 City Sanitation Summit held in Makassar, South Sulawesi, from Tuesday to Wednesday. Representatives of local administrations came together at the Regency/City Alliance for Better Sanitation (Akkopsi) and hundreds of officials from relevant agencies attended the event.

Balikpapan Mayor Rizal Efendi, chairman of Akkopsi for the 2014-2018 period, said sanitation-infrastructure procurement budgets allocated in the regional budgets (APBD) were often not supported by Regional Legislative Council (DPRD) members.

“[Limited] budgetary allocations have become one of the significant barriers in water and sanitation infrastructure development,” he said.

Therefore, Rizal said, regency and municipality administrations joining with Akkopsi recommended that the central government should fully hand over its authority in the procurement of sanitation and water infrastructure, as well as the management of budgetary allocations both from APBD and the State Budget (APBN), to local administrations.

Makassar Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan Pomanto said sanitation and water facilities were the people’s basic needs that had to be fulfilled.

“Therefore, I agree that the central government must hand over its authority both in sanitation and water facility procurement and in budget management to regency and municipality administrations,” said Ramdhan, who was selected to be Akkopsi chairman for the 2018-2021 period on the sidelines of the summit.

As of today, around 24 percent of Indonesian people do not yet have sanitation and water infrastructure or facilities, even though they are the most basic needs that must be filled. East Nusa Tenggara, Papua, West Nusa Tenggara and provinces across Kalimantan are among the areas with the lowest water and sanitation infrastructure availability in the country.

The Public Works and Public Housing Ministry’s Cipta Karya director general Sri Hartoyo said Indonesia was the third worst in the procurement of sanitation infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and was compared favorably only to Cambodia and Timor Leste. Indonesia is lagging behind its neighboring countries, namely Malaysia and Singapore.

“People’s access to adequate sanitation and drinking water in Indonesia stands at only around 76.1 percent. This comprises people’s access to adequate sanitation, which stands at 67.2 percent while the access to basic sanitation and drinking water stands at 8.9 percent and 71.14 percent respectively. Such an achievement is still quite low and we are third worst in Southeast Asia,” said Hartoyo.

He went on to say this achievement was still far from the universal access to sanitation and water targeted by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla to be achieved by 2019, which means the basic needs of all Indonesian people, namely sanitation and water, will be met.

That was why, Hartoyo said, all regents and mayors agreed to collaborate and coordinate to accelerate the fulfillment of people’s sanitation and water infrastructure needs until universal access was achieved in 2019.

Hartoyo said the supply of water and sanitation facilities must be worked on together under a joint collaboration between related sectors.

“Sanitation and water are people’s basic needs that must be fulfilled because ignoring them can lead to major public health concerns, such as stunting in children.This is because sanitation and drinking water can influence the health, nutrition and intelligence of the people,” said Hartoyo.

The National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Alleviation (TNP2K) recorded that in 2016 the number of children under five years old who suffered from stunted growth reached around nine million, or 37 percent of all children in that age category.