Richel Langit-Dursin
JAKARTA, Jul 12 2007 (IPS) – Used plastic bottles and sun rays are all that the impoverished residents of Bintaro, South Jakarta, need for their families to have clean potable water.
The residents, mostly scavengers living near a dump site on Jalan Bintaro Permai in Pesanggrahan, simply make use of disposed plastic bottles and the scorching heat of the sun to purify water, which they pump up from underground.
We don t have to spend money anymore to have clean drinking water, said Dewi, a 29-year-old housewife and mother of three.
Just like her neighbours, Dewi used to sterilise contaminated water by boiling it, spending Rp 45,000 (five US dollars) to buy 15 litres of heavily subsidised kerosene per month. While the amount may not sound big, it means a lot for Dewi whose scavenger husband earns only Rp 10,000 (one dollar) per day.
One litre of kerosene costs Rp 3,000 (three cents) and in many parts of Jakarta, it has become scarce after the state-owned oil company Pertamina decreased supply as part of the government s effort to promote the use of liquefied petroleum gas.
For the past two months Dewi has been using the cheap method of sterilising water by leaving it under the sun, and since then she has been able to save money on kerosene. Unlike before, Dewi now buys only six litres of kerosene a month for cooking. The money that she is able to save goes for the schooling of her 12-year-old daughter.
The affordable method, which is also known as solar water disinfection process, makes the residents save money on medication, too. According to the residents their children now seldom suffer from diarrhoea. One male resident believes that water treated through solar disinfection cured his diabetes.
It s like drinking bottled water, said 40-year-old village head Mulyani, who was at first sceptical and scared to drink the water that she sterilised under the sun.
The 52 poor families of Bintaro Permai learnt about the energy-saving method from Emmanuel Foundation, a non-government organisation established by Emmanuel Laumonier, a former student of Jakarta International School (JIS) who first rejected the idea of getting involved in community service projects, but after working in an orphanage he decided to devote his life to helping others.
Solar water disinfection process is not complicated, said Mindy Weimer, also a former JIS student and the Water Programme director of Emmanuel Foundation. Promoting access to clean water is just one of the projects of the foundation. The organisation also provides education and health services to orphaned children.
To purify water, all that the residents have to do is clean out transparent plastic water bottles, fill them up with water, tighten their lids and leave them under the sun for six hours. The bottles should be full to the brim because air can deflect the sun s ultraviolet rays and prevent them from killing bacteria in the water.
If the bottles are laid on a piece of black cloth, the water will absorb heat faster. However, due to their poor living conditions, the residents just place the bottles on the roofs of their shacks.
When the residents learnt about solar water disinfection process, they were amazed that the sun s rays can kill a variety of bacteria which cause common water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.
However, one of their problems is lack of plastic bottles since they also sell them to earn money. Dewi, for example, only makes use of three plastic bottles, but her family consumes about four bottles of water a day.
If we re really thirsty, we just drink groundwater directly, Dewi pointed out.
Data from the health ministry showed about 80 percent of Indonesia s population gets water from contaminated sources. The data also revealed that groundwater in Indonesia is contaminated with faecal coliform as many residents do not have septic tanks.
The contamination is also due to rusty pipes, many of which are as old as 80 years installed during the Dutch colonial period.
The data also showed that more than 100 million Indonesians do not have access to safe water. Water companies in Indonesia, the world s fourth most populous country, only serve about 40 percent of urban households. The rest depend on other sources such as wells or water vendors. In rural areas, water firms only serve 10 percent of households.
Indonesians who do not have access to piped water buy water for Rp 25,000 (2.7 dollars) per cu m.
Due to poor sanitation, about 100,000 toddlers die of diarrhoea every year, making diarrhoea the second leading killer of children in Indonesia.
Aside from solar purification, Indonesians boil, use ceramic filter systems, or buy liquid sodium hypochlorite to treat contaminated water. Of all the different methods of treating contaminated water, boiling is the most popular method, with more than 90 percent of the country s population doing it everyday, according to the health ministry.
However, boiling water causes air pollution, according to Zainal Nampira, head of the sub-division water sanitation directorate of the health ministry.
The smoke from burning kerosene or firewood causes eye irritation and lung problems, Nampira said, adding that disease-causing organisms will not be killed if water is not boiled properly. To make it safe to drink, water should be allowed to boil for one minute.
Although it is cost-effective, solar purification is currently practiced by a few communities only. Well-to-do Indonesians simply buy a gallon of mineral water, which costs a little over a dollar.
Outside of Jakarta, the simple method is used by some residents of the earthquake-stricken Yogyakarta, and in East Lombok province.
One of the reasons for people s reluctance to use solar purification is its long disinfection period. During sunny days, people have to wait for six hours for the water to be disinfected. However, if the weather is cloudy, they have to expose their plastic bottles for two days.
We cannot rely on the weather. Sometimes, it s not sunny, Syarief, a resident of Tanjung Priok lamented.
In Indonesia, the rainy season starts in November and ends in March. However, residents of Jakarta still experience rain until July.
The other reason for the small number of people using solar purification method is that Indonesians, particularly Javanese, prefer to drink hot tea over just plain water. Thus, the Javanese resort to boiling water.
Another reason why people don t like solar disinfection is that they think the method is only for the poor, said Arum Wulandari, public health engineer of Emmanuel Foundation.
For health reasons, the organisation does not recommend water treated through solar purification for children aged below two and people with HIV/AIDS because they have weak immune systems. Not enough research has been done to confirm that solar water disinfection process is effective against polio.
Exposing water to solar radiation does not kill all kinds of bacteria, Wulandari said. She advises people using the solar water disinfection process to wash the plastic bottles before filling them up with water.
The organisation discovered that some residents in Tanjung Priok have been using plastic bottles for a long time without cleaning them.
To promote the use of solar disinfection, the Emmanuel Foundation distributes comic books to school children, particularly those living in slum areas. We believe that children can influence their parents to treat water through solar disinfection, said Mita Sirait, public health promoter of the foundation.
The comic books advocating the use of solar disinfection feature a girl jogging in a public park with her father. After getting exhausted from exercising, the girl, named Ani, asks her father to buy bottled water. The father is about to throw away the plastic bottle when he is stopped by Ani.
We can use this plastic bottle to make unsafe water safe to drink, Ani states.
After that she explains the process of solar water disinfection and the negative effects of drinking contaminated water, based on what she has learnt from her teacher.
If we don t have a brush to clean the plastic bottle, we can just make use of a bamboo stick or wood and tie a piece of cloth on one end, she says. The story ends with Ani s family happy and enjoying good health.
