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Status quo in city tap water as firms keep old deal
Wet look: An official checks the quality of raw water from the West Flood Canal at a production installation in Central Jakarta
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span class="inline inline-center">Wet look: An official checks the quality of raw water from the West Flood Canal at a production installation in Central Jakarta.(JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
Defying a Supreme Court ruling to end water privatization in Jakarta, city-owned water company PAM Jaya has insisted that it will still cooperate with private operators PT Pam Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Aetra Air Jakarta (Aetra).
Instead of ending an agreement signed by the three companies in 1997, PAM Jaya, Palyja and Aetra are set to sign very soon a new restructured agreement related to the clean water supply in Jakarta.
PAM Jaya president director Erlan Hidayat said on Wednesday that under the new agreement, his company would be responsible for all activities related to the water supply, starting from processing raw water to clean water, distributing the water to consumers, maintaining existing pipelines and developing new pipelines to cover a larger area in the city.
As of now, the existing water pipelines only cover 60 percent of the capital.
Palyja and Aetra, on the other hand, would help PAM Jaya process raw water to clean water as well as distribute the water. PAM Jaya would pay the private companies for their services, but the former had yet to decide how much the service fees would be.
“[Palyja and Aetra] will act as my contractors to process the raw water that I send to them, and then to distribute the clean water to my customers,” Erlan said, adding that the money paid by consumers would go directly to PAM Jaya.
He further said his company would start the operation in 2019.
Previously, all of the activities to produce and distribute the water, as well as to collect money from consumers, were carried out by Palyja and Aetra, as stated in a cooperation agreement signed by the three water operators in 1997.
The agreement, which is expected to end in 2023, states that Palyja controls the water supply in the western part of Jakarta, while Aetra the eastern part of the capital. PAM Jaya itself only acts as a supervisor.
Amrta Institute for Water Literacy director Nila Ardhianie criticized the move to restructure the contract as it did not follow the Supreme Court ruling to end the involvement of the private sector in the water supply.
“Besides, it did not bring fundamental changes to the previous agreement,” Nila told The Jakarta Post separately. “All this time, PAM Jaya would pay the private companies every time they sold the water to consumers,” she added.
Nila urged Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, together with all of his staff members, to create a plan to end the involvement of the private parties.
In addition to that, she explained that the governor needed to build a new big water treatment installation to process the raw water.
Small water treatment installations should also be placed in several rivers that cross the capital to help fulfill the clean water needs in the city, she added.
In a ruling in October, the Supreme Court decided in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Coalition of Jakarta Residents Opposing Water Privatization (KMMSAJ), after finding that the two private firms were providing inadequate services to residents of the city of 10 million people.
The Supreme Court noted that the capital’s water management had to comply with Bylaw No. 13/1992 on PAM Jaya, hence PAM Jaya should be the sole party responsible for managing the capital’s tap water supply.
The coalition has planned to visit City Hall on Thursday to urge the city administration and PAM Jaya to execute the Supreme Court ruling and stop water privatization in Jakarta.
