September 13, 2011
Acute water shortages brought on by an unusually long dry season and poor water management have threatened residents of Bogor and Lombok with low-quality drinking water and food shortages.
In Bogor’s Ciherang Pondok village, hundreds of people have had to queue each day for weeks to get water provided in a public-private partnership by the Bogor administration and French water giant Danone.
Halimah, a villager, said the water she got from the public spigot was turbid but that she had no choice. “This is the only source of water left running,” she said. “The water has a bad odor, but we can’t help it, we need it to drink.”
Turbidity refers to solid particles found in water that give it a cloudy look, though it is often invisible to the naked eye. It can be caused by pollution and can lead to gastrointestinal diseases.
Saprudin Jepri, the village chief, said the spigot had been built years ago to counter annual water shortages, but the villagers’ needs were still not being met.
“It’s not enough for the roughly 1,200 households here. We get people fighting over water for bathing and washing,” he said. “But we still need another source of water just for drinking and cooking, because the water from this source comes from a river.”
He said most of the village’s wells began to run dry by June and that the delayed arrival of the rainy season, which should have started a month ago, had exacerbated the situation.
Saprudin added that the district government initially sent water tankers to the villages, but that this aid had been stopped.
“There’s been no help at all for a while now,” he said. “Our hope is that the administration sees fit to install a pipeline to bring fresh water here, or dig a very deep well. We’d be more than willing to pay for it if we had to.”
The proliferation of holiday homes in the popular Puncak highlands is being partly blamed for the crisis.
Sukarman, a community elder, said the construction of new homes, many of them built illegally, had caused a water flow deficit in downstream areas.
Water at the Katulampa floodgate on the Ciliwung River normally rests at about 70 centimeters. It is now below the 10-centimeter mark.
The floodgate manager, Andi Sudirman, said the holiday homes in Puncak were more than likely a contributing factor to the water shortage. “And what little water we’re getting is being directed largely to farmland for irrigation,” he said.
On Lombok Island in West Nusa Tenggara, the long dry season has left dozens of villages without enough clean water and is threatening a severe food shortage, officials said.
More than 4,600 hectares of farmland out of the total 297,000 across the province have already been affected by the drought, according to the local social affairs agency.
Bachruddin, the head of the agency, said the worst-affected areas were in West Lombok district, while parts of North, Central, South and East Lombok were also suffering from water deficits.
In West Lombok’s Lendang Andus village, residents have to walk up to three kilometers to find water.
Inaq Zahrah, a resident, said that even after trudging there and back, he could only bring back 15 liters of water each trip.
“It’s just for drinking and cooking, nothing else,” he said. “We’ve been experiencing water shortages for many years now, but the authorities have never done anything meaningful to address the problem, like providing piped water to the village.”
A government water tanker still makes the rounds, but residents are limited to 25 liters, or two small pails, each visit. The tanker brings 4,000 liters of water to the three villages in the area each month.
H. Salman, a community leader, said the water shortage affecting the 500 households in Lendang Andus was an annual occurrence going back 11 years.
“Even if we dig our wells deeper it’s no use,” he said. “Many people have dug wells more than 10 meters deep, and even then they only get water during the rainy season.”
“The district head [Zainul Arony] promised to bring piped water here, but he never kept his word. Is it any wonder that people no longer want to live here with all this hardship?” Salman said, adding that around 200 villagers had left in recent years to find work in Malaysia.
Ahmad Ridwan, head of the local water operator, confirmed the area suffered an annual water deficit, but he said there were plans to lay a water pipeline next year.
In 2006 more than 100 million Indonesians lacked access to safe water and more than 70 percent were exposed to contaminated water, according to the Asian Development Bank.
The country has committed to fulfilling the Development Goals by 2015, which means it needs to provide roughly 70 million more people with improved water supply and sanitation, says the World Bank.
(x the JG)
wo 14 sep 2011 - 0:25