Carlos Roy Fajarta Barus, Jakarta – Marking the 23rd World Water Day, seven ministries on Saturday signed a mutual agreement to revitalize the National Movement of Water-Saving Partnerships at the Pluit Reservoir City Park. All this took place while Jakarta's demand for clean water goes unmet.
The city needs up to 1.5 million cubic meters of clean water every day, but municipal water operators Aetra Air Jakarta and Perusahaan Air Minum Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) can only meet around half the city's demands.
Clean water managed by Aetra and Palyja during this time has just reached 520 million cubic meter per year, but much to lose due to leaks and theft worth 40 percent. Meanwhile, only 300 million cubic meters of clean water get effectively distributed to the citizens and industries.
A water expert from University of Indonesia, Firdaus Ali, said today there are 10.8 million Jakartans officially recorded at Jakarta's Population and Civil Registry Agency. However, during day time that number can balloon to 13 million.
"PAM Jaya through Aetra and Palyja claimed that the scope of their pipelines reaches 62 percent, whereas it is just 38 percent really distributed to the citizens. Such matter is very far from the MDG's target in 2025 at which Indonesia in every region is mandated to be able to reach 80 percent," Firdaus said on Saturday.
Firdaus hoped President Joko Widodo's administration will seriously reconsider the plan to build 49 dams as he considered the number of dam in the country to lag India, Japan, the United States and China. "By comparison, India has 1,500 dams, Japan has 3,000 dams, the United States has 6,100 dams, China has 21,000 dams, but Indonesia has only 284 dams, so Indonesia's number of dams is still far behind."