For the past month, residents of Sidoarjo district in East Java have blocked the main road running through Porong subdistrict in a bid to bring attention to their cause.
But after having taken part in these regular sit-ins for the past six years, Pitanto is growing weary. "We're all getting tired of having to do things like this, like blocking the highway," he says.
What grieves Pitanto the most is that he's having to take to the streets to demand something that he and thousands of other residents have been owed for more than half a decade now: their rightful compensation.
These are the villagers who lost their homes and farms to the mud volcano that began gushing from the ground in Porong on May 29, 2006. Today, the mud covers nearly 700 hectares of land, including more than 10,000 homes, and still continues to bubble out of the ground.
Most experts blame the gusher on drilling activities carried out in the area by gas exploration company Lapindo Brantas, controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the Golkar Party chairman who was the coordinating minister for people's welfare at the time of the incident.
Lapindo, however, insists the mud volcano was triggered by an earthquake in Yogyakarta – 300 kilometers away, and two days earlier. The government, though, has ordered the driller's holding company, Minarak Lapindo Jaya, to compensate the residents for the loss of their land.
As the affected area grew, from the initial six villages in Porong to 16 in three subdistricts, including Jabon and Tanggulangin, so did MLJ's bill, which now stands at Rp 2.5 trillion ($267 million) in compensation to residents and Rp 1.3 trillion to stem the spread of the mud. The government itself has allocated Rp 6.2 trillion. The compensation process has been slowed by legal wrangles over which residents are eligible for the program.
Andi Darusalam Tabusala, the MLJ vice president, recently said that although the company still had Rp 1.1 trillion in compensation left to pay, it only had Rp 400 billion in funds, which would be prioritized for residents with claims of less than Rp 500 million each.
"As for the residents with claims above Rp 500 million, we will find another solution," he said, indicating the company could take out a loan.
But the stalled compensation process is threatening far more dire problems as the mud and flammable gases continue to spew out of the ground.
Several months after the gusher began, the government decided to channel some of the mud into the Porong River and out to sea. Because of the heavy silting, the Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency (BPLS), the government body set up to handle the disaster, has had to continuously dredge the river.
But there has been no dredging for the past month, following a protest in which residents blockaded the BPLS office where its heavy equipment was stored.
Akhmad Kusairi, the BPLS spokesman, says the silting in the river has now reached such a critical level that no mud is flowing out. The mud contained inside the embankment built around the affected zone has risen to dangerous levels – less than a meter below the rim of the embankment.
"The situation will be very drastic if we can't quickly restore the flow of mud out to the sea," Akhmad says.
Even if the mud doesn't spill over, he warns that the sheer volume could cause a breach in the dam that would send mud pouring onto the Porong highway and the railway line passing nearby. "I just hope the residents and Lapindo can reach an agreement on the compensation soon so that we can get back to work," he said.