Months After Court Rules to End Private Control of Jakarta's Water, City is Still Stalling

Erna spent World Water Day marching with a bucket of water in protest outside Jakarta's City Hall complex. She was one of the dozens of city residents angry over the capital's inability to regain control of its own water supply from the private companies handed this vital piece of urban infrastructure more than 20 years ago.

The Supreme Court ruled in the city's favor five months ago and ordered the private firms PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Aetra Air Jakarta to hand over the city's water supply to a publicly owned PAM Jaya. But today, nearly a half-year later, much of the city still lacks access to the water network.

"We already won the lawsuit which demanded that the local government return control of the water to PAM, but it still hasn't been implemented," Erna, a protest coordinator, told local media. "Today is World Water Day and people are still struggling to get clean water."

Watch: Jakarta is the world's fastest sinking city

We've written before about Jakarta's long battle to get its residents water. Today, 60 percent of the people living in the capital don't have access to clean, piped-in water, according to estimates by the central government's statistics agency. Most residents compensate for a lack of city water by drilling their own wells—wells that are, today, destabilizing the entire city to the point that its expected to dip below sea level by 2030.

The Supreme Court's decision was supposed to end all of this. Both private companies have struggled to expand the city's water grid, and even communities with access to the grid often have to deal with foul-smelling polluted water pouring out of underground pipes that were so poorly maintained that they allow ground water to seep into the stuff that comes out of your tap.

But the city's government still hasn't taken control of the water network. Earlier this week, the city council urged Governor Anies Baswedan to take action and "fulfill the justice and welfare of the people." But this has proven easier said than done. Anies promised to form a special committee to oversee the transfer, but he never issued the committee members a timeline or a list of their responsibilities.

The governor's administration told VICE that his administration was still trying to get their heads around how, exactly, to provide a city of 10 million people with city-owned water. Then there's the issue of the contracts. The city's water company, PAM Jaya, resigned a contract with the two private companies in September of last year that would've extended private control until 2023.

The court ruling was supposed to have voided that contract, but the city administration isn't so sure. PAM Jaya was supposed to sign a new contract taking control of the water grid on 21 March, but Anies' administration postponed the signing because the governor hadn't had the time to study the new contract.

“The draft of contract is still being studied by the governor,” Erlan Hidayat, the director of PAM Jaya, told VICE.

The worry here is that both the court's ruling and the prior contract are bound by law, regardless of the fact that one is meant to invalidate the other. Without a new contract, the city is reluctant to make a move, said Bambang Widjojanto, the chairman of the Governor's Team for Accelerated Development (TGUPP).

"Ending the privatization of our water needs to be done carefully and accurately even though the Supreme Court ruling is already final," Bambang told VICE. "We don't want things to be carried out in a rushed way that ends up damaging the government and the people."

But Nila Adhianie, the director of non-profit water organization Amrta Institute, doubts this story. The city should have no problem at all taking control of the water grid, as long as their is sufficient "political will." But without a push from the Anies administration, it's unlikely the city's water company is going to be able to regain control of its water anytime soon.

For water activists like Zainal Abidin, the chairman of Jakarta Water Workers Union (SPAJ), the waits already gone on long enough. If the governor fails to make a move, then his organization will once again start to pressure the local government into action.

"We've already prepared a strategy to pressure the government to execute the Supreme Court ruling immediately," Zainal told VICE. "The new contract is unnecessary. We don't want there to be any hidden agendas behind it. They should have stopped operating immediately, as soon as the ruling was finalized."