Struggling for rights to water
By Ratna Yunita

“When I was expecting my second baby, I got hernia. Every morning I have to walk 2km away from my house to get clean water,” said Ibu Ratih. I met her after she gave her testimony in the Women Tribunal: Women against Impoverishment. It was my second time to meet the inspiring lady. Our first encounter was when KRuHA -- the organization where I am working at -- invited her to give testimony in our documentary movie, “Jakarta Water Privatization.”

She had been working at a fishery company since 1990. But her employer filed for bankruptcy in 2006. At present, Ibu is a housewife. Her husband, on the other hand, has no permanent job. Sometimes he works as a coolie. Other times as a garbage collector. He has tried every kind of job to survive the hard life in Jakarta. He has no regular monthly income. There are even times when he doesn’t earn at all.

Ibu Ratih’s family has difficulties in fulfilling their basic needs not only because of unpredictable income but because of higher prices of basic goods nowadays. She should pay Rp270.000 (US$29) up to Rp360.000 (US$39) a month for clean water that she buys from a small-scale water enterprise that is located 2km away from her house. While during summer, the price is exorbitantly higher amounting to Rp540.000 (US$58) per month. She has no choice but to rely to it because the piped water in her house is not always available. There are even times when the quality of water from the pipes is so bad, not fit for consumption. But the worst part is that she has been paying for a basic charge in spite of the irregular supply and very bad quality of water for almost two years.

I was surprised to know when she said that all of these problems have begun to occur when Lyonnaise and Thames, which is now taken over by Aquatico, took over the drinking water resource management in Jakarta since 1997. She realized that privatization is not the answer to fulfill people’s rights to water. Privatization or corpocracy is a matter of bigger role that’s played by giant corporations in as many as people’s daily needs (Alvaro J. de Regil). Privatization tends to abolish the role of the government as the guard of “bonum commune”; transferring the public control into shareholder’s interest/control including pricing. In the end, gaining higher profits will become the priority instead of improving services. By mid-June 2008, the Governor of Jakarta has announced that the tariff on drinking water will increase as part of the automatic tariff adjustment scheme.

“How dare the government increase the water tariff! Every morning when all people hardly need water, it does not come out,” said Ibu Ratih.

The poor gets marginalized by privatization scheme. Only those who can pay get access to clean water. This situation also happened in other countries, such as Bolivia, Pakistan and Argentina. The UN Covenant stated that access to clean water is a human right. Hence, giving a price to water as a tradable good is clearly paradoxical.

I think the Government of Indonesia doesn’t realize that developed countries that occupied Jakarta’s water resource management is actually “kicking away the ladder” (Friedrich List), so that as a developing country, it will never be able to step the ladder that they used before to become at part with them in terms of managing water resources. They manipulate the government by saying privatization is the most promising medicine to resolve the ongoing water crisis.

Ratna is a campaign coordinator of KRuHA (People's Coalition for Rights to Water)