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Jakarta Post

Clean water still a pipe dream for most people

“Documenting 75 years of resilience” is a series of special reports by The Jakarta Post to celebrate Indonesia’s Independence Day on Aug. 17, 1945.

Sausan Atika (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, August 15, 2020

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Clean water still a pipe dream for most people

I

n the 19th century, then East Indies lieutenant-governor Thomas Stamford Raffles wrote in the History of Java that Javanese people commonly boiled water and drank it while it was still warm.

 

That practice remains relevant two centuries later, as more than half of all Indonesian families consume water from sources that provide water deemed unsafe to drink. The rest, or four of 10 families, buy bottled water.

 

Indonesia’s Independence attained 75 years ago has not done much for access to water.

 

Water (never) for all

Michelle Kooy, an associate professor of the Politics of Urban Water at IHE Delft, told The Jakarta Post in an interview in 2009 that even piped water in Jakarta had not been designed for all in the first place.

 

“During the Dutch era, it was for the Dutch people. During the Sukarno period, it was for the new rich, so they could show the modern Indonesia. During the Soeharto period, water service was meant to serve economic growth rather than social fairness. Universal coverage has never been the goal,” Michelle said.

 

In 2018, Michelle and research partner Kathryn Furlong looked beyond piped water to research inequality in access to water and found that rich people in Jakarta also have more access to groundwater. With their deep wells and powerful pumps, they get more groundwater than their poor neighbors who rely on shallow wells.

 

The United Nations has recognized access to water as a human right and promotes safely managed drinking water services. The UN defines “safe” as accessible on-premises, available when needed and free from contamination.

 

Indonesia is among the countries that signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global effort to address poverty and inequality. One of the SDGs is to provide universal access to safe drinking water.

 

As 80 percent of Indonesian households collect water from sources that do not necessarily meet the above criteria, the country has much work to do to prove its commitment.

 

Resources are abundant yet problematic

Indonesia is blessed with 691.3 billion cubic meters of potential usage of surface water every year, according to the Public Works and Housing Ministry. That is more than 200 times the capacity of the Jatiluhur dam in West Java, the country's largest manmade reservoir.

However, Indonesia has utilized only 32 percent of its potential. 

 

Indonesia's current water availability, 50 cubic meters (cbm) per capita per annum, is considered "very small compared with storage per capita in other Asian countries", the Asian Development Bank stated in a 2016 report.

 

The government plans to reach 120 cbm per capita per annum by 2030, still a low rate compared to Thailand in 2005, which was 10 times higher (1,200 cbm).

 

While resources are plentiful, the Environment and Forestry Ministry has reported that more than half of Indonesia’s rivers are heavily polluted, mainly due to domestic, agricultural and industrial activities.

 

“It is a fortunate thing that we have abundant potential resources, but the question always is how to properly manage [these resources]," water expert Arief Sudradjat from the Bandung Institute of Technology told the Post.

 

 

A shifting trend

The Dutch colonial administration built water pipe system in the 19th century to serve affluent residents only. An expansion of the water service began under Sukarno’s lead in 1953 through the construction of Pejompongan I water treatment plant in Jakarta. Infrastructure projects for other provinces capitals followed.

 

In 2009, the central government included a program called 10 million drinking water pipelines into the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN). The program has since extended for three consecutive terms, as it never reached the target. 

According to the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), 8 million new households have gained access to piped water over the past decade.

 

The use of tap water, however, remains small, given that only a few have access to indoor plumbing.

 

Statistics from 1971 onward show that fewer than 20 percent of Indonesian families use tap water for drinking. Along with the improving economy after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the trend has shifted to bottled water since the early 2000s.

 

"[People] choose bottled water for its practicality and the changing urban lifestyle, as more than half of our population is urban communities. But its environmental and social costs have not been precisely incorporated, making piped water services uncompetitive against bottled water," said Tri Dewi Virgiyanti, Bappenas’ director of urban housing and settlements.

 

Institutional issues, funding problems hamper progress

Under the country’s regional autonomy, drinking water services are managed by local governments. 

 

Local water companies have made unequal progress, as improvement largely depends on the local leader's political will, said Erlan Hidayat, the former head of the Indonesian Tap Water Companies Association (Perpamsi).

 

"The [handling of] tap water companies in many regions is far from the principles of checks and balances, which are badly needed during regional autonomy today," he told the Post

 

Operators feel the pinch as the defunct Water Supply Development Supporting Agency (BPPSPAM) categorized more than 40 percent of water companies unhealthy, at least for the past five years.

 

The World Health Organization says each dollar spent on water investment will yield twice that value through good sanitation. But funding for water investment in Indonesia still falls short of at least Rp 238 trillion (US$16.27 billion) needed to complete piped water coverage. 

 

During the past five years, the central government allocated about Rp 75 trillion for 10 million drinking water pipelines.

Local leaders under the Alliance of Regencies and Municipalities with Sanitation Awareness (Akkopsi) have committed to allocating of at least 2 percent of city budgets for water and sanitation. This means Rp 109.5 trillion in budget spending for the above purpose over the past five years, but the realization has fallen short. 

 

As cumulative funds from central and local governments have yet to meet the target, and are competing with other sectors, the country has been seeking alternative funds to build clean water infrastructure. 

 

One of the sources was a loan from the French government and French-based company Degremont, the public works ministry wrote in Drinking Water History in Indonesia: 1800-2005

 

Alternative funding has varied from government-to-business cooperation and donors to corporate social responsibility projects, NGOs, bank loans, communities and even Islamic charities. 

 

"Securing funding for drinking water investment remains a big task,” said water industry observer Eko Wiji Purwanto, who once worked for the government on water issues. “Many alternative funding sources are available, but [investors] always look at [many] factors before forging cooperation," he said. 

 

Ambitious but mandatory

For the decade ahead, Indonesia aims to achieve universal access to safe drinking water with the first target to raise the current figure, roughly 6.8 percent, to 15 percent by 2024.

 

Critics have said that the government’s progress on expanding water pipelines is “not on track” and they agree that both the central and local governments should step up their efforts.

 

"Surface water should have been the main source for drinking water, but groundwater [extracted by people on their own] supplies the most. There must be something wrong when the people have to provide clean water on their own," ITB's Arief said.

 

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