Dealing with informality in water supply services in Indonesia

60192 NOVEMBER 2010 Dealing with Informality in Water Supply ABOUT THE AUTHOR Services in Indonesia DEVIARIANDY SETIAWAN Communities demand that community-based water provider organizations is a Community Development (CBOs) be more professional in their delivery of water and provide the level Specialist and Country Program Coordination for the Water of service they expect. This demand may be a challenge, not only in terms of and Sanitation Program in Indonesia. With a combined the internal capacity of the CBO but also in terms of the uncertainty as to engineering and social the legal status of the organization that performs the service function. A development background, he has a decade of experience in dearth of corporate practice, efforts toward formalization, accountability participatory approaches, mainly in rural water supply framework, and partnership definition are areas that policymakers and local and sanitation development. authorities need to work on if they want CBOs to perform their role better APPROVING MANAGERS in water supply, particularly in rural areas. This SmartLesson describes the Almud Weitz, Regional Team Multi Village Pooling Project's experience in generating lessons on the Leader, Water and Sanitation Program - East Asia and the challenges and potential of CBOs formed under previous projects and Pacific. identifies ways to help them improve, expand, and manage on a continuing Jaehyang So, Global Program basis. Manager, Water and Sanitation Program Background Figure 1. Rural Water Supply Access Indonesia's more than 70,000 villages are spread across 491 districts and municipalities in 33 provinces. Fifty-six percent of the country is rural, and 52 percent of the population depends on shallow wells for their water. According to WHO-Unicef Joint Monitoring Program data (2008), overall access to water is 80 percent, but with a disparity between urban (90 percent access) and rural (70 percent access) areas. To improve services, over the past two the community in the operation and decades, with World Bank funds alone, the maintenance of facilities, and so on, but also government has built no fewer than 10,000 to the poor performance of local water water supply facilities in villages. These utilities. facilities are managed by CBOs. The figure is even greater if facilities built using national Learning from the implementation of previous budget funds, other donor funds, and social projects, the design of the implementation of funds from corporations are taken into community-based investment projects was account. improved to better ensure the sustainability of the facilities. Project preparation focused This increased investment in CBO-managed not only on achieving good quality facilities is due not only to the internal benefits construction, but also on social preparations of a community-based approach, such as in anticipation of changes in roles and strong sense of ownership, community functions in the existing community structure contribution to the project, involvement of as the result of having a new institution SMARTLESSONS -- NOVEMBER 2010 1  manage the facilities. A demand-responsive approach was structure. For example, their customer base may now adopted to ensure that the project was targeting those expand beyond those involved in setting up the CBO to who actually wanted water supply services. Cash and in- include people who did not contribute in cash or in kind kind contributions from the community during the when the project was under way, and in some cases do not construction of the facility are required as an indicator of even live in the administrative territory of the village for demand for the project. which the service was originally intended. The implication of these developments is that not all users have the same As a result of the consistent adoption of this approach, and rights and responsibilities. For example, the greater the because of communities' continued need for water supply number of users, the greater the delegation of functions services, the role of community groups in service provision from the community to the CBO. Although not officially is growing. documented, there is evidence that community participation in strategic decision making has been delegated to the A study by the Water and Sanitation Program1 (WSP) in CBO. Users are more concerned with getting a decent 2008