Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Population

ENVIRONMENT-INDONESIA: Drowing in Water Woes

Richel Dursin

JAKARTA, Feb 1 2000 (IPS) - After waking up at 5 a.m., Triyatmi, a 35- year-old housewife heads for the kitchen and boils a cauldron of water for the consumption of her family throughout the day.

Like her, this is the daily routine of many Indonesians in the capital, a megacity of 12 million people, because the water from subsidised water companies and drilled artesian wells is not potable.

Health Minister Achmad Sujudi puts it bluntly: “The quality of water in Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia is not guaranteed for drinking because the water supplies are polluted.”

Water provided by municipal water companies, known here as Perusahaan Daerah Air Minum (PDAM), in urban and rural areas across the country is only suitable for “cleaning”.

“Water coming from our tap smells like that of mud. If it is not brownish, it is whitish,” says Triyatmi, a mother of two sons from a low-income family in Sunter Agung Podomoro, in North Jakarta. “So I make it a point to boil the water before drinking and cooking. I don’t want to spend our money on hospital bills,” she adds.

Triyatmi has been doing her boiling routine for three years now and will not take the risk of using water straight from the tap — her husband, Budi, and youngest son, Dede, had been hospitaliaed for water-borne diseases.

A recent study conducted by the Ministry of Health showed that 40.6 percent of all water supplies provided by PDAM in urban areas throughout Indonesia are contaminated with fecal waste. “In most houses in urban areas the bathroom is too close to the water source, thus it (fecal waste) is absorbed into the water,” Sujudi said.

Besides, most urban areas cannot afford to build sewerage systems because of the high cost. The leakage in the pipe network is also extensive, as the pipes, both old and new, are not properly installed.

The PDAM, which get raw water resources mainly from the country’s polluted rivers, can hardly handle the dirty raw water due to lack of advanced technical treatment. Water provided by PDAM comes from 201 rivers, 248 springs, and 91 artesian wells across the country.

At present, not all local governments have regulations which mandate PDAM to control water quality according to health standards.

There is little incentive for municipal water companies to clean up, since they are unable to gain profit from providing water as the water tariff is considered “extremely low” and does not cover their operation costs.

Local governments subsidise water companies with the goal of making the world’s most basic commodity more accessible to the poor. However, most Indonesians prefer to get water from drilled artesian wells instead of from PDAM.

In Jakarta, 43 percent of its 12 million residents get water from PDAM, latest data from the Central Bureau of Statistics show. “Jakarta is a big city and there is a gap between the facilities and demands of the people,” Sujudi says.

Concerns about water quality, as well as migration into the city and sprouting of informal settlements, drve many to tap groundwater instead, a practice that creates its own problems. Still, majority of Jakarta’s residents uses water from drilled artesian wells because it is “better and cheaper” than water from PDAM.

“Water from the well is of good quality and always available when needed,” says Haja Rosma, 70, a resident of Slipi in West Jakarta who has been using groundwater for four years now.

Most municipal water companies are not able to serve the public’s needs, due to limited water production and distribution capacity. In some urban areas, water supply from PDAM is not for 24 hours.

As more residents, industries and hotels use groundwater, water is becoming scarce in some areas in northern and western Jakarta.

“We are now entering the water crisis period because of growing competition for water use between industry and domestic consumers,” says Nur Hidayati, industrial pollution and toxic waste campaigner of the non-governmental Indonesian Forum for the Environment.

And even though Indonesians can get water from drilled artesian wells, they still are required to boil the water before drinking as a preventive measure. “Most urban residents have no septic tanks in their houses due to limited space,” Hidayati laments.

Slum residents purchase water from small-time vendors at a cost of at least 3,000 rupiah or 45 U.S. cents for every 20 litres of water.

Wealthy urban residents prefer to buy bottled drinking water instead of painstakingly boiling water everyday. One gallon of bottled water costs at least 6,000 rupiah or 90 U.S. cents.

Indonesia’s water woes are such that even travel agencies now caution visitors to the country to “stick to bottled water and not to drink from a tap even in the most luxurious resorts”.

Indeed, the Ministry of Health has identified the regency of Buleleng in Bali, toward the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, as the only place in the country where tap water is safe to drink.

“The people of Buleleng care for their water resources because of their culture,” Sujudi says, citing that they put up statues to drive away people from contaminating their water resources.

Meantime, experts say water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid fever are prevalent in Indonesia because of unsafe drinking water. “Some people don’t boil the water before drinking even if we tell them to. That’s the dilemma,” Sujudi points out.

Diarrhea mortality for all age groups is 56 for every 100,000 people, and 250 for 100,000 children below five years old, according to the health ministry. This has prompted health officials to step up prevention efforts especially among the young who are more at risk.

“Since we cannot afford safe drinking water for all people, we have to immunise the children to prevent the spread of diseases,” Sujudi says.

Every year, the government administers free immunisation to 20 million children who are susceptible to water-borne diseases.

But people’s bad habits add to the increasing pressure on Indonesia’s water supplies, already taxed by a growing population in a country of more than 200 million people, industrialisation and rapid urbanisation.

Some people living along the city’s riverbanks prefer to dump their garbage into the rivers instead of paying 4,000 rupiah or about 55 U.S. cents to refuse collectors each month.

“Throwing garbage into the river is our only choice. What else can we do? We’re poor and cannot afford better sanitation,” argues Agus, who lives close to the Ciliwung river, one of the sources of raw water of local water companies, in Kampung Melayu subdistrict in East Jakarta.

With many industrial companies lacking “costly” facilities to treat wastewater, the quality of water in Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia is unlikely to get better soon.

“Most of the country’s rivers are polluted not only because of domestic wastes, but also due to industrial wastes,” says Hidayati. “If the firms pollute the rivers, the government does not do anything because its paradigm is more on economic development than on environmental protection.”

In rural areas, the quality of drinking water is even worse than that in the cities. Government statistics show that a total of 49.6 percent of all water supplies fail to meet bacteriological standards due to the severe lack of sanitation facilities.

 
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