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North Jakarta is no stranger to problems, one of which is lack of access to clean water.

In 2006, international aid agency Mercy Corps conducted a mapping survey of the RW 12 neighborhood in the area’s Penjaringan district.

With more than 2,500 households packed into 23 hectares, the community is a densely populated one.

According to the survey, only 36 percent of the residents had access to water piped in by PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja), one of Jakarta’s two privately run water providers.

“I need two to three carts of water per day,” said 62-year-old Nurhayati, who lives with her husband and grandchild in the area.

Most of the residents of RW 12 are laborers, traders and factory workers, and usually earn about Rp 1 million ($110) per month.

Families used to spend an estimated 8 percent to 9 percent of their monthly income to buy water from private entrepreneurs who had cornered the market in the area.

A 19-liter jerry can, equivalent to two full buckets, cost Rp 500 and a cart able to hold 120 liters cost Rp 1,500. Most families like Nurhayati’s needed more than one cart daily.

“Families used to spend up to Rp 90,000 a month on water,” said Sutarman, RW 12’s neighborhood leader.

Water consumption for an average family of four is estimated at 6-7 cubic meters.

To address the issue, Mercy Corps launched the Communal Master Meter project, a water-supply system that connects 60 households to a central community-run line of clean water supplied by Palyja.

Established in 2006, it is run under the Mercy Corps program, Healthy Places, Prosperous People (HP3)-Lestari, with the goal of improving the lives of Jakarta’s urban poor.

The International Development Research Center, a Canadian organization that supports developing countries in building infrastructure, provided funding for the project.

Although the Communal Master Meter can provide up to 400 liters of tap water per household daily, demand for water still far exceeds supply.

The project can only supply water to about 2.5 percent of RW 12’s households. And there’s also the issue of water pressure.

The distribution of water to 60 households is divided into three zones to help balance the pressure.

Water is distributed to each zone twice a day for an hour at a time on a rotation basis.

“We can’t open all the pipes for all the zones at one given time,” said Vincent Pooroe, Mercy Corps’s urban water and sanitation officer. “We have to store the water, regulate the time and distribute it fairly.”

Participating households pay a Rp 200,000 installation fee in installments over three months. While Palyja sets the rate at Rp 3,550 per cubic meter of water, consumers pay Rp 4,700 per cubic meter.

The higher rate is set by community-based organization Jaka Tirta 012, which has members from the 60 connected households.

The difference between Palyja’s rate and the actual price paid by customers is set aside for repairs and administration and operational costs.

For residents like Nurhayati, what is good about using the Communal Master Meter is money saved and accessibility.

She now only spends Rp 23, 000 to Rp 25,000 per month for 5-7 cubic meters of water as opposed to the Rp 90,000 to Rp 100,000 it used to cost her. “

And since the water is available in taps in front of our house, I don’t have to push water carts anymore,” she said.

Michelle Kooy, urban director of Mercy Corps, said: “We wanted to show operators like Palyja and PT Aetra Air Jakarta that it can be profitable to serve the poor.

You can charge a higher rate and they’ll pay it, but you have to give them good service.”

Irma Damayanti, manager of Palyja’s Water for All program, which aims to increase access to clean water, said: “The result is good and the response from the community has been positive.

Now, they can get clean water in front of their homes, and buying clean water only costs them 4 percent of their salary.”

Fifteen members of Jaka Tirta 012 took part in a 12-day training session facilitated by Mercy Corps, where they learned how to run, manage and maintain the water facility.

“But it is really the women of the community who have led this project because they want clean water for their children,” Kooy said. “They have been instrumental in the organization, planning and collection of fees.”

Djinab, the secretary of Jaka Tirta 012, said that since the men worked all day, the women were the ones with the time to push the project forward.

“And water is essential,” she said. “In RW 12, water is lacking. Not everyone has access to pumps. So we support any project that can give us access to clean water.”

Water quality is maintained by Jaka Tirta 012 operators and is no longer a problem for residents. “Before, the water we bought from [Palyja] was not clean enough.

Sometimes it was yellow and smelled of chlorine,” said Muro, a resident and vice chair of Jaka Tirta. “Now, we always test the water before we distribute it to the community.

If the water isn’t clean enough, we shut down the taps until it is.”

However, the community still faces the problem of illegal tapping of water sources, which causes decreased water pressure and poor water quality.

Muro said that members supervise the communal water system to ensure that it is used only within participating households and that the coordinator of each zone collects the monthly connection fees from residents.

“This [way of working] creates transparency and accountability because all of the members can jointly monitor the pipelines,” Vincent said.

After four years of collaboration with Palyja and Jaka Tirta 012, Mercy Corps officially handed over the community-based water supply system to the community group on June 2.

“This project tried to demonstrate that a community-based system can work as an alternative in urban slum areas,” Vincent said.

“We have set up the system and a module of how to manage it financially. Next, it will be the government and private organizations’ turn to replicate the system.”