Water governance crucial in corruption fight, say experts

Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post, Bandung | Tue, 06/22/2010 10:42 AM

Corruption in the water sector hurts the poor most, while discouraging investment and undermining efficient water resource management, experts say.

Michael Hantke-Domas, the honorary associate at UNESCO’s Center for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said Monday that corruption ranges in scale — from petty to grand corruption.

Petty corruption, he said, involves small payments such as those made to help adjust water meters, while grand corruption involves big money, for example in infrastructure projects.

Corruption, he said, could be found on both the supply and demand sides — in the form of preferential treatment, driven by private sector, bribery and fraud in licensing, procurement and construction; and demand for bribes in exchange for services.

“It occurs in resource allocation, procurement and construction, such as diverting funds for a water supply network,” said Hantke-Doma, who is also a senior adviser at Governance, Law & Regulation.

According to a recent study, an estimated 30 percent of international aid agencies’ money spent in different countries was lost to corruption, while another study estimated that in the water sector 30 to 70 percent of funds for water-related projects was lost to corruption.

Hante-Doma was one of the speakers at a five-day international workshop on water governance, held in Bandung, West Java, which was attended by participants from five countries.

The workshop was a jointly funded initiative between UNDP Cap-Net, AguaJaring, IHE Indonesia and CKNet INA. Another expert on water projects, Mohd. Adnan, said when corrupt systems failed to deliver, poor people had few means to enter alternative markets.

“Acting within such a system, poor people, who typically cannot afford to pay bribes, lose out to the ones offering the highest bribes,” said Adnan, a consulting engineer and project manager from Malaysia’s RPM Engineers.

“But corruption is not a natural disaster. It is created, crafted and perfected by those who seek private gain at public expense.” Adnan pointed out that water sector is characterized by a number of factors that increase the likelihood of corruption.

The factors, he said, included the involvement of large-scale construction and monopolies, high demand for water services and technical complexity, which decreases public transparency and leads to an asymmetry of information.

“Corruption causes decisions to be weighed in terms of money, not people’s needs,” he said.

For example, he added, slum water provision, designed for the poorest families, may not be taken into account, while the needs of those who can pay the most are met immediately.

“Because of corruption we lose perspective of what is important for the people,” Adnan said.

Improved integrity, transparency, accountability and anticorruption measures in water lead to better decision making and more effective management, allocation and distribution of water resources and services, said Jap T. L. Yap of the World Bank and IHE Indonesia.

“There is a need to change from a sector-based approach to integrated water resources management to help prevent corrupt practices.”

Water governance workshop in Bandung

The Jakarta Post, Sat, 06/19/2010 12:07 PM

BANDUNG: Dozens of participants are attending a five-day international workshop on water governance scheduled to be held in Bandung from Monday.

The participants, according to organizing committee member Erita K. Santosa, come from Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. The training program is a jointly funded initiative between UNDP Cap-Net, AguaJaring, IHE Indonesia and CKNet INA.

"Improved integrity, transparency, accountability and anti-corruption regarding water leads to better decision-making and more effective and fairer management, allocation and distribution of water resources and services." - JP

Jail terms for Shanghai collapse

BBC News

Underground digging eroded the foundations of the apartment building.

Two men have been jailed in China for corruption linked to the collapse of a building that left one worker dead.

Que Jingde and Zhang Zhiqin of Shanghai Meidu Real Estate both received life terms for the June 2009 collapse.

According to China Daily, Zhang had allowed an unqualified contractor to build an underground car park.

This, combined with a large pile of excavated earth on the other side of the building, caused it to topple to one side, the paper said.

The building, a large apartment complex in Shanghai's "Lotus Riverside" development, fell over almost intact.

It was empty at the time of the collapse, but a worker who had returned to the site to collect his tools was killed.

Zhang was convicted of corruption, embezzlement and causing an accident, and Que on one count of corruption.

Sewage treatment in the pipeline

The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Wed, 03/25/2009 10:59 AM

The administration is planning to build a sewage treatment network for the city, and more waste treatment facilities, the governor said on Tuesday.

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo said the administration had developed a plan that would adopt a system currently being used in the Setiabudi area near Jl. HR Rasuna Said, South Jakarta, with a network of ducts and a sewage treatment system dam.

Fauzi said the dam was part of the Kuningan area sewage network. It was a pilot project that should have been developed further, but funding had been insufficient at the time of its construction.

“Our cash flow had not been that strong since we were allocating funding to other public services,” Fauzi said.

“We are considering dividing the network into separate clusters,” he said. Each cluster would have its own treatment plant.

“We mulled over this idea some years ago, and there was a plan from Malaysia that used water tanks. But this is not that simple. Those water tanks need to be supported by a network of ducts.”

Fauzi said the administration planned to build open ducts.

“And while this is not really an extraordinary system, the cost is huge.

“It costs more to remove sewage than it does to supply drinking water. I think it will cost more than Rp 1 trillion. We need investors.”

Fauzi said the administration also planned to charge residents for the use of the system. The charge would be billed along with tap water fees.

Fauzi said this billing system was common in developed countries.

“If bills are separated, the public will not want to pay for the removal of sewage,” he said.

The latest data shows that only 3 percent of Jakarta’s population is connected to proper sewage facilities.

The capital has only one sewage treatment plant in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, and waste treatment facilities in Pulo Gebang, East Jakarta, and Duri Kosambi, West Jakarta.

Public Works Ministry data shows that in 2008 there were 1,460,079 households (63.4 percent of those in Greater Jakarta), which disposed of their sewage waste into closed gutters; 784,568 households or 34 percent dumped their waste into open gutters; and 56,139 households flushed their waste directly into the ground or into rivers.

Most gutters, however, are not connected to sewage treatment plants, but to waterways, thus causing massive pollution problems in the city’s 13 major rivers.

Household waste from toilets, ammonia, BOD (biological oxygen demand) and COD (chemical oxygen demand), have been flushed into these rivers.

A 2008 academic study of an environment ministry plan to control the contamination of the Ciliwung river revealed levels of BOD, COD, and coli bacteria in the Ciliwung river surpassed contamination thresholds, as revealed by Kompas newspaper. (iwp)

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$600m Lombok Resorts Scrapped

The Jakarta Globe,  Janeman Latul, March 14, 2009 

Citing governmental paralysis and hinting that too many officials had their hands out, Dubai’s state-owned Emaar Properties PJSC has cancelled its massive $600 million property project that was to turn the pristine island of Lombok into another Bali. 

“We have closed our office in Jakarta starting Friday,” said Elly Savitri, Emmar Indonesia’s human resources manager. “Emaar has pulled out of its operations in Indonesia because the government cannot comply with the terms of the agreement with our joint venture company. 

“There have been too many delays on the realization of the project and the company just could not wait any more.” 

Elly also said Emaar had spent Rp 50 billion ($4.2 million) in consultancy fees on master plans. 

Winarno Sujas, the Tourism Ministry’s director for businesses and investment, told the Jakarta Globe on Friday that Vice President Jusuf Kalla had summoned the related ministries for a meeting this coming Wednesday in a bid to save the project. 

The cancellation of the project — announced with great fanfare in May 2007 by Kalla — is an enormous black eye for the Indonesian government and the local government of Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara Province. 

“Indonesia is our 16th global market and the Lombok development will scale up our property portfolio to a wider Southeast Asian region,” Muhammad Ali Al Abbar, Emaar Properties chairman, said at the project signing. 

The announcement of the failure of the project follows the recent pullout of the Saudi Binladin Group from a project to invest as much as $4.3 billion in developing rice crops in Merauke, Papua Province. 

The joint venture between Emaar and the state-owned Bali Tourism Development Corp. envisioned development of 1,200 hectares along seven kilometers of natural beachfront that would have transformed central Lombok’s Kuta and Tanjung An beaches over the next 12 years into a world-class resort and residential community consisting of 10,000 luxury villas, eight hotels and two 18-hole golf courses. 

Emaar’s Elly said the agreement stipulated that the government would provide a detailed master plan by last November to support infrastructure including an international airport, an access road to the property and finalizations of land acquisitions. The finalizations, however, never materialized. 

A plethora of government agencies failed to complete their part of the bargain and asked for an extension until this month. When Indonesian officials asked for another extension until June, Emaar called off its investment. 

“You understand the Indonesian government,” said an Emaar executive who asked not to be named, in a veiled reference to allegations of corruption in the local and central governments. 

Sumaryanto Widayatin, a special adviser to the Public Works Ministry, blamed unprofessionalism for the tangled negotiations. 

“I think it’s because the Ministry of Finance was worried about selling the land cheaply to Emaar,” he said, adding that the global economic crisis had also cut into the company’s liquidity. 

He said every large project in this country attracted officials who had their hands out. 

“Where in Indonesia do we not have the problem of corruption?” he asked.

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Jakarta needs planning supervision: Experts

The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Sat, 03/14/2009 1:53 PM

Corruption and a lack of professionalism among government officials and contractors has contributed to many building failures across Jakarta, a seminar concluded on Friday.

Sulistijo Sidarto Mulyo, chairman of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) charter of professional engineers, said “building failures” did not just mean building collapsing, but also included poorly planned buildings.

“New schools with no students, or overpriced construction costs for a seaport are also examples of building failures,” Sulistijo told a seminar held by Pelita Harapan University.

If the government and developers worked by the book, these failures could be avoided, he said.

In South Korea, for example, developers must show would-be buyers all materials they intend to use for an apartment, Sulistijo said.

“They [the developers] would not dare change the quality of the materials. Here, developers show materials in promotional brochures but then use lower quality materials in construction,” he lamented.

Sulistijo told a story about an earthquake in a country not unlike Indonesia, in 1985.

“All government buildings crumbled, and only a few were left intact. This showed that not only had substandard materials been used, but that corruption was also invovled,” he said.

A similar catastrophe could happen in Jakarta, Sulistijo said.

Another speaker, Manlian Ronald Simanjuntak of the UPH civil engineering faculty, said building conversions were often a sign of building failure too.

“Basically, if we don’t feel comfortable with a building, this is a sign of a building’s failure,” Manlian said.

He highlighted the conversion of residential areas in the city into commercial premises as a good example of building failure.

As the economy expands and spaces are increasingly hard to find, many Jakarta residents have converted their houses into commercial properties.

South Jakarta municipality reported that owners of 1,649 buildings were abusing their residential permits. Many of these were being used as beauty clinics, spas, cafes, restaurants, offices, storage facilities and pharmacies.

“This is a case of building failure, but the administration doesn’t dare recognize it as a failure because they were the ones who handed out the permits.”

Sulistijo said that good buildings were ones that provided the most benefit to an area, over a certain time frame.

“We are really weak in the area of supervision of building developments,” he said.

He admitted that an independent body, like MUPA (Manggala Utama Penilai Ahli) whose engineering experts members, had yet to take on a supervisory role in building planning and development in Jakarta. (iwp)