From complaints to billions of rupiah, everyone is doing their best to be a part of change in the way PDAM Tetra Wampu serves its consumers

Jakarta. The municipal water company PDAM Tetra Wampu, Langkat, North Sumatra, held a public awareness event for its customers jointly with the regency administration at the Langkat regent office in late August 2007.

The discussion, which was supported by ESP North Sumatra, was the first public awareness presentation ever done by the company since its inception 20 years ago. The meeting aimed at informing all stakeholders of the company’s current condition and performance, as well as its business plan for the next five years.

One of the most interesting parts of the presentation and ensuing discussion was the question and answer session with some of the company’s 14,800 customers, who made various complaints and suggestions on how to improve the water company’s performance. One of them said that he had contacted the company once to inform it of a water pipe leak in his house, and had never gotten any response at all.

“How can you improve your service, if you don’t even take information from consumers seriously? Come on, acting on customer response is one of the cheapest ways to improve business,” said the complaining customer. The discussion it also revealed that most consumers do not mind tariff increases provided that this would improve the quality of service.

The next day, representatives from ESP and PDAM Tirta Wampu conducted a discussion with Langkat Regent Syamsul Arifin in which Syamsul showed his commitment to the improvement of clean water access in his region by providing a Rp 7 billion (US$ 700.000) fund. The money will be allocated to improve the water company’s production and distribution system for the Pangkalan Brandan area of service.

“Pangkalan Brandan is the area which generates the biggest income for PDAM Tirta Wampu. I believe it deserves bigger funds to expand,” says Syamsul.

Benny Djumhana, ESP Jakarta