As the only government owned water utility in Barru district, South Sulawesi, PDAM Barru is responsible for providing a sustainable piped water supply for the district population and, at the same time, is demanded to make profits. Yet, PDAM Barru’s service coverage is still limited. As of 2017, the company was only serving 8,658 customers of the total 172,767 population in the district.
Expanding the service coverage is a big task for PDAM Barru as the expansion requires huge investment and the company currently has limited resources to do so.
“We are committed to provide everyone in Barru district with access to safe and affordable piped water. But, we understand that we still have a lot of work to do to improve our operations and expand our services. Therefore, we need to have a solid business plan to guide us run our business better using all our potential resources,” said Suheri Made, the Director of PDAM Barru.
To develop a solid yet applicable business plan, PDAM Barru, with support from USAID IUWASH PLUS, generated inputs from other local government working units (OPDs), such as Bappeda, PUPR office, Perkim office, and BPKAD through meetings held from February to May 2018. One of the highlighted suggestions is the use of local government investment to finance some of PDAM Barru’s programs which require extensive budget, such as new house connection construction and water treatment plant (IPA) rehabilitation.
After incorporating input from all stakeholders, PDAM Barru finalized the 2018–2022 Business Plan in May 2018. In this business plan, PDAM Barru proposed to receive government investment amounting to about Rp5 billion from 2018 to 2022. With the new business plan, PDAM Barru targets to increase its customers from 8,658 in 2017 to 12,791 in 2022.
“We hope that the business plan will direct our operations better. Using the government investment, we hope to be able to achieve our target, increasing PDAM customers by 37.8% by 2022,” said Suheri Made, the Director of PDAM Barru.
Yet, PDAM Barru has to complete other measures to fully implement its business plan. Currently, PDAM Barru and other OPDs are discussing necessary steps that the PDAM has to take to access the government investment, such as exploring possibilities to conduct a study on the programs to be funded under the investment.
-Fauzia Melaniati (Contributor)-
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