Water and sanitation program in Decentralised Eastern Indonesia: the roles of community and social dynamics in East Nusatenggara

Abstraksi

Water and sanitation remains one of the challenging issues in many developing countries including Indonesia. Millions of people suffer from inadequate access to clean water as well as to healthy sanitation. The recent decentralization was expected to play a big role in development program that addresses local issue such as water and sanitation. Decentralization may offer better service to society by closing the gap between government and society at local level but the lack of capability of local governments could be a barrier to deliver the water and sanitation services. Therefore, World Bank has been supporting Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) as an alternative solution to overcome this problem. This research analyses water and sanitation issue in two poor districts in Eastern Indonesia to see how the community in the poorer region may develop their water and sanitation services. Based on survey, in-depth interview and using by qualitative method, this research shows that the local (district) government still hold a very important role in the delivery. Besides setting the policy framework, the local government is also needed in the implementation especially in communicating and coordinating the delivery of the program. This is despite the active involvement of NGO and local community. This study shows that in the implementation, good, consistent and continuing communication can be more important than the triggering step in CLTS. This needs to be adapted to the socio-economic-geographical condition and the local culture in the area.