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Halifah, a grandmother who shares her home with four family members in Rawamangun, East Jakarta, has had to depend on her neighbor’s water supply since Thursday.

Halifah is a customer of city water provider PAM Lyonnaise Jaya [Palyja]. Along with hundreds of thousands of Palyja’s other clients, she has not had more than a thin trickle of running water since a dike burst on Wednesday, halting the supply of raw water to the water treatment centers.

“In my neighborhood, there is one house which uses groundwater, so the other neighbors all depend on that house,” she said.

“We’re lucky that there’s no power blackout, because if there had been one, then we would really be done.”

Halifah expressed hope that the government could fix the breach as soon as possible. With the holiday season about to end, she said, work and school would resume, and their return would bring with them an basic need for water.

Linda, a resident of Semanggi, South Jakarta, wasn’t as lucky. She had no neighbor using ground water and was forced to buy water at Rp 5,000 (59 cents) per jerrycan, about Rp 2,000 more than the usual price.

Her household needs at least five jerrycans of water daily for cooking and bathing, she said, and drinking water is another problem.

“I buy a gallon of mineral water that costs Rp 13,000,” she said.

“Because it’s still the holiday, I told my family members to take only one bath a day.”

Meanwhile, Mohammad Amron, the Public Works Ministry’s directorate general of water resources, said repairs on the dike would not be completed until Saturday at the earliest.

“It could be done in one day, but because of the lack of workers [due to the holiday], these repairs will take about three days beginning on Thursday,” he said.

Amron blamed the breach on increasing human activity.

He said that at least 54 illegal bridges had been built over the Kalimalang River, at least 4,000 illegal taps of the piping network had been found in the area and the busy nearby highway was stressing the soil.

Meyritha Maryanie, Palyja’s corporate communication manager, estimated that repairs would be finished by Monday.

“We hope that Perum Jasa Tirta II can accelerate the repairs so that the flow of clean water can reach customers as soon as possible,” she added, referring to the city-owned company that operates the dike.

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo ordered the city’s public works office to assist with the repairs.

“This is not the responsibility of the Jakarta government, but we are responsible for the residents who are suffering from a disruption in their clean water supply,” Fauzi said.

The head of the city’s public work office, Ery Basworo, said his men were already providing the necessary machinery and helping transport the sheet piles to fill the gap in the dike.

Amron said that once some 60 sheet piles were in place, the temporary dam in the Kalimalang River could be reopened and water would be able to reach the processing plant in Pejompongan once again.

He added that a permanent repair of the breach would take about a year and cost up to Rp 2 billion.
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