On August 25, 2021, the Ministry of Health, the City Health Office of Jakarta and USAID IUWASH PLUS organized a virtual sharing session with Puskesmas across Jakarta, relevant city offices, partner companies, and academics to disseminate lessons about Community Based Total Sanitation (STBM) implementation in Pademangan Barat and Tebet Timur urban villages. The sharing session, which also discussed the sustainability and replication of the STBM initiatives in the two urban villages, officialy marks the conclusion of USAID IUWASH PLUS’ five-year program in the Special Region of Jakarta.
A total of 376 participants attended the discussion, with opening remarks given by the Director of Environmental Health of the Ministry of Health, Ms. R. Vensya Sitohang; the Head of the City Health Office of Jakarta, Ms. Widyastuti; and the Project Management Specialist of Water and Sanitation of USAID Indonesia, Ms. Nur Endah Shofiani. Other participants included the representatives of related city government offices, the STBM Teams from Pademangan Barat and Tebet Timur, and sanitarians from Puskesmas across Jakarta. The sharing session was also live-streamed on YouTube and has so far garnered 240 views.
The event, which was titled Sharing Session on Lessons from the Implementation of the STBM Approach in Jakarta, highlighted the experiences of the STBM Teams in Pademangan Barat and Tebet Timur in trying to improve WASH conditions in their respetive areas. USAID IUWASH PLUS and SIMASKOTA facilitated the formation of the two STBM Teams in 2018 and have been training and assissting them to carry out WASH promotions, education, and socialization since.
The STBM Team of Tebet Timur shared that so far they have arranged the construction of one communal wastewater treatment plant and eight individual septic tanks and explained how they maintained multi-stakeholder collaboration to do so. The collaboration involved PT Sinar Mas, which procured the communal wastewater treatment plant, and Universitas Indonesia and PT Rototoma Berlianplast, both of which provided the individual septic tanks. Combined, these facilities have provided access to sanitation for 223 people in 23 houses.
In Pademangan Barat, the STBM Team has also managed to arrange the construction of 20 septic tanks through a collaboration with PT Sinar Mas. The septic tanks are now installed in 11 houses and accommodate a total of 55 people.
Tebet Timur and Pademangan Barat communities partially financed the construction of the sanitation facilities by paying for the house connections of the communal wastewater treatment plant and the fees of the construction workers who installed the individual septic tanks.
The Ministry of Health and Jakarta Health Office applauded the collaborative approach in implementing the STBM and expressed their commitment to supporting this initiative’s continuation and scale-up. Ms. Widyastuti, the Head of Jakarta’s Health Office, remarked, “We hope this is not the end and that there will be a continuation to the program so that we can together realize the Special Capital Region of Jakarta as a Healthy City, whose health qualities are standardized.”
Following the sharing session, on August 26, 2021, the Jakarta Health Office, with the facilitation of USAID IUWASH PLUS, organized a training session on electronic monitoring and evaluation of STBM for sanitarians across the city. The City Health Office will continue to support the replication of this collaborative approach in Jakarta, including in Ciracas and Ancol urban villages, which are going to collaborate with PT Rototama Berlianplast and the STBM Team of Pademangan Barat to construct several septic tanks in September.
Until March 2021, in the Special Region of Jakarta, USAID IUWASH PLUS has helped to deliver safely managed sanitation to 69,240 people and improved sanitation to 345 people, 83% of which are poor. The Program’s support in Jakarta has also managed to convince the City Government to allocate a total of IDR 14.3 billion through the Regional Budget (APBD) for numerous WASH projects.
