Indonesia, Jakarta: slums struggle with sanitation

In Jakarta’s northern Muara Angke coastal area, a lack of access to piped water has forced people to bathe and wash clothes using murky grey water from fish ponds.

“I don’t feel disgusted at all. I’ve gotten used to it,” Ibu Nunung, who shells mussels for a living, told IRIN outside her house in Muara Angke Blok Empang, a slum in the area.

Nunung said residents, many of whom live on less than US$2 a day, had to fork out the equivalent of up to $1 daily to buy clean water for drinking and cooking from vendors transporting water in jugs.

She admitted that itchy skin was a common problem among locals.

Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, is dotted with slums like the one in Muara Angke.

Many people live without running water in shanty towns built in the shadow of gleaming skyscrapers, and gutters are clogged with rubbish, causing foul smells.

“Poor sanitation, lack of access to clean water, overcrowding and poor nutrition are among [the] major problems in Jakarta, and the government’s commitment is needed to address these problems,” said Erlyn Sulistyaningsih, a project manager with Mercy Corps Indonesia.

Less than 50 percent of Jakarta’s residents have access to piped water, according to the NGO, which runs water, sanitation and health programmes in the city.

More than 75 percent of the city’s residents rely on shallow groundwater, but an official study found that 90 percent of shallow wells are contaminated with coliform bacteria or heavy metals, Mercy Corps said in a 2008 publication entitled Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy.

Jakarta produces 6,000 tons of waste each day, but can only manage 50 percent of it, it said.

Sulistyaningsih heads a project aimed at increasing access to sanitary facilities, including toilets, providing access to clean water, and educating child caregivers about nutrition in several villages in Jakarta and neighbouring Bekasi District.

“Our programme seeks to prevent diseases which are spread by the faeces-to-mouth route, and we hope it can be replicated by other communities,” she told IRIN.

Premature deaths

A study released by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme in 2008 revealed that only 57 percent of Indonesian households had easy access to a private and safe place to urinate and defecate in 2004.

Poor sanitation, including poor hygiene, causes at least 120 million disease episodes and 50,000 premature deaths annually, the report said.

The study also found that poor sanitation costs the Indonesian economy $6.3 billion per year, or equal to 2.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Nugroho Tri Utomo, head of the subdirectorate of drinking water and waste water at the National Development Planning Agency, said part of the problem was a lack of funding, with spending on sanitation accounting for only 1 percent of the city’s budget.

“Both the general public and authorities have yet to realize the importance of sanitation, not only to health but also to the economy,” he said.

Improvement plans under way

The government last month launched a programme to provide access to adequate sanitation to 80 percent of urban households by 2014.

The Settlement Sanitation Development Programme, estimated to cost $5.5 billion, aims to develop waste water services in 226 cities, build sanitary landfills serving 240 urban areas, and stop inundations in strategic urban locations covering 22,500 hectares.

Under a separate programme called the National Strategy for Community-Based Total Sanitation, launched in 2008, the government aims to provide access to sanitation and introduce more effective water treatment methods in 10,000 villages by 2012.

See also:

• Mercy Corps Indonesia - Ibu Rumyati, Making Behavior Change Possible in Urban Slums
• Community-led Total Sanitation – Indonesia
• Portal Sanitasi Indonesia

Source: IRIN, 16 Apr 2010

USAID – A Rapid Assessment of Septage Management in Asia

A Rapid Assessment of Septage Management in Asia: Policies and Practices in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, 2010.

Full-text:  http://www.waterlinks.org/septage-report

by USAID and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

ECO-Asia prepared the report in collaboration with the Department of Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries at the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, and in consultation with stakeholders from a range of Asian national governments, water and wastewater operators, research agencies, and international development agencies.

The report comprehensively documents the weak state of septage management for onsite sanitation systems, the main form of urban sanitation in many Asian cities. It provides a regional analysis of key challenges and existing good practices related to septage management, and highlights strategies through which governments, water and wastewater operators, and development assistance agencies can promote septage management as a practical near-term solution to the region’s critical sanitation challenges.

The key finding is that most countries neglect septage management, which results in significant urban water, environmental and public health damages. Nevertheless, a number of countries and cities in the region have established effective regulations, treatment facilities and supporting programs that can be replicated across Asia through focused water operator partnerships.  USAID supports water operator partnerships through the WaterLinks network.

Sanitation/water photos from Benin, Kenya, Ethiopia & Indonesia – Jay Graham/USAID

Benin

You are invited to view Jay’s photo album: Environmental Health Photos: Benin, Kenya, Ethiopia and Indonesia (2009):

• View Slideshow
• View Album 

Indonesia, East Java: monitoring total sanitation progress via SMS

In October 2009 the Total Sanitation and Sanitation Marketing (TSSM) project piloted a short message service (SMS)-based sanitation monitoring system in East Java, Indonesia.

By using the system to improve the flow of information about the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) triggering process from the community- to the district level, Indonesians will also be able to improve monitoring results of the CLTS program.

Each designated health officer or sanitarian periodically sends text messages comprising the baseline and progress data – such as the number of households with newly constructed latrines – to an SMS gateway or server, which automatically updates the TSSM progress monitoring instrument.

So far the trial has been successful in that the conversion of SMSs into the digital monitoring format worked well without errors, updates have been in real-time without the need for data entry or editing, and the system has been stable and compatible with any computer system.

Outputs from the trial [were to] be shared with all sanitarians in the TSSM project at a meeting in November 2009. The system is expected to be replicated by the entire 29 districts in the province. TSSM aims to help 1.4 million additional people in all districts of East Java gain effective access to improved sanitation.

Contact: Jan-Willem Rosenboom, Water and Sanitation Program, East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office (WSP-EAP), Indonesia, e-mail: wspeap [at] worldbank.org

Source: WSP Access, Dec 2009

Indonesia – Defecation outside toilets a common sight

Despite a government campaign promoting a healthier lifestyle and improved sanitation facilities, some people continue to defecate in rivers and in other open areas around their homes.

Residents are also frequently found dumping garbage just about anywhere. In the Jagir area of Wo nokromo, Pasuruan, East Java, the sight of people defecating in rivers has become commonplace, and can also be seen throughout the country.

One riverbank squatter in Surabaya, Siti Aminah, 45, for instance, prefers to answer the call of nature in a river, despite there being a public toilet nearby.

“I’m used to pooing in the river, ever since I was little. Despite the frequent campaigns for using public toilets and healthy lifestyles, pooing in the river is more pleasurable,” she said last week.

Siti is not alone in her filthy habits. Every morning, housewives living near the Surabaya River frequently defecate in the river before washing their clothes there.

The habit of randomly defecating is not only done by residents living along the banks of the Surabaya River, however. In a number of places, such as at a village located on the slopes of Mount Kelud in Blitar, East Java, the habit is also embraced by local villagers who prefer to defecate in the bushes and later cover it up with dirt, despite the availability of toilets there.

A youth figure in Kalibadak village in Blitar, Sunanto, 35, said defecating in the garden and around the house had been practiced since the Japanese occupation. A majority of villagers who work in plantations still carry it out until now.

“The public toilets are too far from their workplaces, so they prefer to do it in the open and later cover it up with sand,” he said.

Abdul Cholid, chief of Dlambah Dajah village in Tanah Merah district, Bangkalan, Madura, said hundreds of villagers defecated carelessly in the open.

But after the government built 350 latrines and the provincial administration conducted its campaigns, the habit was gradually dropped, he added.

“It takes time and hard work to get people to defecate in the toilet. The government built toilets around the village in 2004, but people only stopped defecating in the open from 2006,” Cholid said.

Apart from the government, the Kaliandra Sejati Foundation, which is working together with Leeds Metropolitan University in England, has been trying to change the habit, party by introducing the composting toilet, developed in Europe and considered environmentally friendly.

Rupert Bozeat, an associate senior professor of design at Leeds Metropolitan University, said composting toilets had been used in communities across England and Europe, and even at his family’s home in England.

“Besides being eco-friendly, the toilet is also sanitary and doesn’t emit smells, because the feces are separated from the water used to flush it. We don’t have to spend money pumping out the feces,” Bozeat told The Jakarta Post last Thursday.

He added compact feces separated from water were then flushed into a tank, whose capacity could be adapted for each family’s needs. The contents of the tank can then be used as organic compost for farming.

“The flushed water, which is channeled through a pipe, can be reused after going through the water treatment process. This can certainly minimize the water crisis,” Bozeat said.

He added that building such a facility only cost Rp 10 million, which included the Swedish-made Aquatron, to separate solid matter and liquid.

The cost of building a composting toilet is far more expensive than installing a septic tank, which costs an average of Rp 1 million.

Kaliandra Sejati Foundation community development officer Fathurohman said students at Leeds Metropolitan University were still setting up composting toilets at the Kaliandra Cultural and Natural Education Center in Dayurejo village in Prigen district, Pasuruan, and would introduce it to the public soon after completion.

Source – Jakarta Post

Documentary Film: Coming Clean on Sanitation

This 22-minute documentary film, produced in 2009 by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with assistance from 5 national broadcasting companies in the region, showcases the difficulties experienced and actions undertaken by individuals, communities, organizations, and governments in the following 6 countries:

• China, People’s Republic of –  A photographer documents the degradation and revival of Suzhou Creek.
• India – People clamor for individual household toilets after realizing its benefits.
• Indonesia - A dedicated teacher and her students campaign for the use of public toilets.
• Pakistan - A cleanup woman comes home to a community of garbage, without water and sanitation.
• Philippines - Lakeside slums deal with water pollution and the consequences of water-borne diseases.
• Viet Nam - A dying lake is revived by a huge development project, benefiting lakeside towns.

To get a DVD copy – go here

Source: ADB

Indonesia: Educating Kids for a Healthy Future

By teaching children proper hygiene practices, a teacher educates and improves the health of poor river communities.

[...] For 11 years, Nurhayati, or Teacher Nur has been teaching proper hygiene practices and caring for the environment to her students in communities along the Kali Malang and Sunter riverbanks in Jakarta. She also encourages residents to use the public toilets built by the government.

[...] Today, even with public toilets, the communities’ onslaught to the environment continues. Teacher Nur brings her classes by the river to show her students the murky water and floating garbage as evidence of the communities’ indiscreet waste disposal.

[...] Indonesia has about 66 million people practicing open defecation (OD), more than one-third of the country’s total population. Next to India, it is the most OD-prevalent country in the world. .

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital with a population of almost 10 million, obtains about 80% of its fresh water supply from the Citarum River [often called the world's most polluted river]. [...] Slum communities clustered around [...] waterways contribute greatly to the city’s severe water pollution.

[Poor sanitation in Indonesia is a leading cause of] diarrhea [which] alone claims almost 100,000 babies’ lives every year.

Residents of the slum communities {living] along [...] riverbanks [...] cannot afford the most basic sanitation facilities, [and] dispose of their wastes directly into the waterways.

[...] At school, Teacher Nur’s students wash their hands and brush their teeth together, while singing songs about hygiene and cleanliness. But her greatest accomplishment is that her students bring the lessons they have learned in school into their homes and share them with the entire household.

Since the government built the public facilities, Nurul, a girl and one of Teacher Nur’s students, and her mother have been using them everyday.

[...] The public toilets are not enough. Nurul and her mother have to stand in line for hours before they can use the facilities. Furthermore, some public toilets require a certain fee and most poor families have to scrimp for the costs. Nurul said, “I must pay 500 (rupiahs) to take a shower and another 500 to use the toilet. If it’s full, we shower outside. My mother pumps out water from the deep well.”

In 2008, in line with the United Nations’ Year of Sanitation, Indonesia launched a National Strategy for Community-Based Total Sanitation, which aims to provide 10,000 communities with access to clean water and sanitation by 2012. [The Asian Development Bank] ADB [...] is also working with the Indonesian government on increasing sanitation coverage in the country.

Source: Cezar Tigno, ADB, Feb 2009

Clinton visits USAID-sponsored toilets in Petojo

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited on Thursday a toilet-provision project sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Petojo Utara in Central Jakarta as part of her two-day visit to Indonesia.

Tempointeraktif.com reported Clinton arrived at the subdistrict after she had met with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

During a press conference at the neighborhood Junior High School 38, Clinton said she had planned this brief visit as part of her people-to-people approach to diplomacy.

“Through this kind of interaction, I can find out what the public feels and can encourage them to better their quality of live,” she said.

At 1:30 p.m., she left the subdistrict and headed to Halim Perdanakusuma airport to continue on with her official trips to South Korea and China.

Source – Jakarta Post

Indonesia: The challenge of piped water and sanitation

Like many villages in Madiun District, East Java Province, Geger [...] for years lacked piped water or adequate sanitation facilities.

While the water problem was partly addressed by installing wells, the issue of adequate sanitation remained a concern. A stream that snakes through the village served as a natural latrine, with the downstream current relied on to wash away the sewage.

“This became a particular problem during the dry season when the river dried up,” Faridah, the village midwife, told IRIN. “There was a high rate of diarrhoea among the villagers.”

[...] In 2006 [...] Geger’s local government [established] public washing areas – or MCK, referring to mandi, cuci, kakus (bath, wash, toilet). Two were established – one beside the local mosque and another near the community health centre – with the help of a $25,000 grant for rural infrastructure from the government.

Faridah said the MCK, especially the one near the health centre where she worked, helped to significantly cut the incidence of diarrhoea, but proper sanitation facilities within homes would be the ideal solution.

Households, however, could not be fitted with their own sanitation facilities as the village only received water for one to two-and-a-half hours per day due to limited supplies from the well.

[...] In 2007, the government tried to provide a solution by setting up a Perusahaan Daerah Air Minum, or PDAM, a local government company tasked with supplying water through piped connections. But few Geger residents signed up to the facility because they found the Rp 1,100/cubic metre (10 US cents) charge too “expensive”, said Bambang Alfi, head of the community development group.

The rate, however, is far lower than the national average water tariff of Rp 1,705/cubic metre (18 US cents). According to Ir. Firdaus Ali, a board member of the Jakarta Water Supply Regulatory Body, it is, in fact, much too low for the PDAMs to run efficiently and at a profit.

“PDAMs can’t even cover their operating expenses,” he said. “The reasonable tariff should be at least 3,000 rupiahs per cubic metre.”

According to Ahmad Lanti, an adviser to the East Asia Pacific Infrastructure Regulatory Forum, 75 percent of the country’s 306 PDAMs were in a precarious financial state in 2007, partly because of these low tariffs.

“The tariff in that village is probably already one of the lowest in the country,” Lanti told IRIN. “But if the people still cannot afford it, it must be subsidised by local government. It’s a public service obligation.”

In a number of other higher income cities and districts, the central government has begun inviting private sector investment to make PDAMs more efficient and sustainable. But this often means higher tariffs.

“That is not possible for that East Java village,” Lanti said. “It’s the government’s responsibility.”

The Ministry of Public Works last week announced a plan to connect 10 million new consumers throughout the country to piped water over the next four years in a $933 million project. The residents of Geger village can only hope they are among that number.

Source: IRIN, 12 Jan 2008

Indonesia: Clean Future for World’s Dirtiest River

Photo ADB

Indonesia’s efforts to clean up the Citarum River, often called the world’s most polluted river, received a major boost [on 05 December 2008] following the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) approval of a $500 million multi-tranche loan package ]extended over a 15-year implementation period]. The first loan tranche is for $50 million.

The Citarum River Basin Territory supports a population of 28 million people, delivers 20% of Indonesia’s gross domestic product, and provides 80% of the surface water supply to Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta.

Over the past 20 years, rapid urbanization and industrial growth have resulted in growing quantities of untreated domestic sewage, solid waste and industrial effluents being dumped in the Citarum.

[...] “ADB’s initial assistance will provide safe water supply and sanitation facilities for poor families who currently use water from the polluted canal for bathing, laundry and other uses,” said [Christopher Morris, a Senior Water Resources Engineer in ADB's Southeast Asia Regional Department]. “It will also allow the cultivation of an additional 25,000 hectares of paddy, benefitting 25,000 farming families.”

The [Integrated Citarum Water Resources Management Investment Program] will provide bulk water supply for an additional 200,000 households in Jakarta, and will ultimately increase Jakarta’s water supply by 2.5% annually, and resolve Bandung’s critical water supply shortages, benefitting millions.

To ensure that communities are effectively consulted about the management of the basin, a Water Council will be created.

View the photo essay

Source: ADB, 05 Dec 2008