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Some Jakartans denied clean piped water for decades
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Illustration of water crisis. (Shutterstock/File)
W
hile Indonesia is set to host the world’s largest water conference in Bali this week, many people living in the country’s capital remain without reliable access to clean water provided by the city, forcing them to seek out independent solutions.
Among those who lack municipal water access is 40-year-old scrap dealer Nanang. His neighborhood in Muara Angke, North Jakarta, has yet to be covered by the pipe network of city-owned tap water company PAM Jaya.
He told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the only option available to him was to buy water delivered in blue plastic barrels every morning. Nanang said he needed at least two 20-liter containers of water for daily needs, such as bathing and washing clothes. Each gallon of water costs Rp 2,000 (US$0.13).
Nanang and his neighbors have tried to dig wells to get a sustainable water supply, but the water pumped up is murky and salty, so its use is very limited.
“During the dry season, [access] to clean water is even more difficult because people consume more while the water being sold does not increase in volume,” he said. “When that happens, I have no choice but to mix the water that I buy with the groundwater for showering.”
Nanang added that while the government sometimes delivered water tanks to meet locals’ daily needs, such assistance was unreliable because of its uncertain schedule. He said he had seen no significant improvements in water supply or distribution since he moved to Muara Angke in 2000.
Rohmani, a water seller, also struggles with such scarcity. Authorities only allocated two water tanks to his neighborhood in Muara Angke, an amount that he said was insufficient to meet the demands of the at least 300 households in the neighborhood.
