Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in which many programs have to slow down, Jayapura district government is still trusted to receive 2020 special allocation fund (DAK) for sanitation from the MPWH amounting to around 4.7 billion rupiahs to improve the community’s sanitation access.
In 2019, of the total 38,413 households in Jayapura district, 24,837 households have healthy permanent latrines, 1,719 households use healthy semi-permanent latrines, while the remaining share toilets or practice open defecation (STBM M&E, 2019).
Using the 2020 DAK Sanitation, Jayapura district government decided to build individual and shared septic tanks for low-income in two urban villages and four kampongs (villages), namely Hinekombe and Sentani urban villages, as well as Sereh, Yobeh, Hobong, and Yoboi kampongs. These areas were selected because they have high portion of residents not having toilet with septic tank, which is reflected from the participatory M&E in 2020. The participatory M&E estimated that more than 90 percent of residents in these areas do not have toilet with septic tank.
The PUPR office and Pokja PPAS of Jayapura district, supported by USAID IUWASH PLUS, leveraged the collaboration by engaging puskesmas and the participatory M&E teams from the recipient urban villages and kampongs to speed up the sanitation DAK implementation. Support from the puskesmas, village governments, and participatory M&E teams includes identifying and recommending the potential beneficiaries to the PUPR office. In particular, the participatory M&E teams made the proposals based on the community action plan developed together with the community leaders and members. Other than that, the monitoring and evaluation teams continue educating the community on the importance of septic tanks to protect their health and environment. This effort is essential to motivating the beneficiaries to adopt the desired hygiene behaviors.
Thanks to harmonious collaboration between the local government and community, around 122 individual septic tanks and 48 shared septic tanks with capacity of two house connections each were built by December 2020. This construction has benefitted more than 200 households.
“The toilet with septic tank is beneficial for us. We do not need to worry that our waste would contaminate Sentani lake,” said Kundrant Sokoy, a beneficiary from Yobeh Kampong.
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