Water

Master metre

Water utility PALYJA’s responsibility

Community-based organisations’ responsibility

Figure 11: Schematic representation of a master meter system managed by a community-based organisation

Box 4: Micro-scale infrastructure provision in Western Jakarta

In Jakarta, Indonesia, a significant proportion of the population lives in informal settlements. While the government does not want to legitimise the unlawful occupation of land, it realises that the provision of access to safe water and sanitary conditions is necessary. A private water utility, PALYJA, is responsible for water supply in Western Jakarta and it is expected to supply water to all residents, including those in informal settlements. To this end, PALYJA has a water-supply contract with the government whereby they are paid for the cost of delivering water to users and for the cost of building and maintaining the necessary infrastructure.

As part of this process, PALYJA is trialling the provision of access to groups of informal houses by establishing

community-based organisations. Each organisation is given access to a single master water meter and is responsible for the management of the community’s water- supply infrastructure as well as paying for the volume of water taken (Figure 11). MercyCorps has helped connect 38 households to a single meter, while USAID’s Environmental Service Program (ESP) has brought 58 households together. Once established, the community signs a supply contract with PALYJA, with a special tariff arrangement to account for the fact that many households are using a single meter. Under this arrangement, both sides benefit: the community gets reliable access to an affordable waste supply, while PALYJA supplies a large number of houses with water at much lower overhead and administrative costs. Source: Fournier et al. (2010)

was sufficient to enable a significant upgrade of domestic water supplies and to supplement irrigation. One project benefited almost 200,000 households (Gould 1999). At the micro-scale, it is possible to make much greater use

of aid organisations and local knowledge. In Western Jakarta, for example, the local water utility is working with non-government organisations to provide water to people in informal settlements in a manner that would

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