Decades of underinvestment in wastewater infrastructure has left Indonesia lagging behind its regional neighbours. Only 12 cities have functioning sewerage systems, and these serve less than 2% of the urban population. Most urban households are served by septic tanks, which are often poorly managed. When tanks are full, it’s not uncommon for communities to experience the widespread contamination of groundwater and neighbourhood drains.

The South Sumatran capital of Palembang is no exception.

As Indonesia’s eighth largest city with a growing population of at least 1.7 million people, improving city-wide sanitation has been challenged by geographic conditions, lack of financial resources, and rapid population growth that strains infrastructure development capacity.

“When it comes to urban sewage and sanitation in Palembang, there is a complex web of challenges to address. Fortunately, in recent years, the Indonesian government has invested in the development of a much-needed sustainable urban sewerage system, known as the Palembang City Sanitation Project, (PCSP)” explains Yeni Rosliani, PERINTIS Team Leader.

“Australia helped co-finance the program and then contributed an additional AU$40 million for the construction of a Wastewater Treatment Plan and Pumping Station. All of this goes a long way to improving sanitation across the city.”

Community Engagement: the Missing Link

Soon after the PCSP was up and running, PERINTIS (or Pemberdayaan Masyarakat Inklusif untuk Sanitasi – Community Empowerment for Inclusive Sanitation) entered the picture to provide support and introduce new ways of doing things in the sanitation space.

PERINTIS, which began in August 2021, was an Australian government funded pilot program, sitting under the umbrella of the Indonesia Australia Partnership for Infrastructure (KIAT) and managed and implemented by Palladium.

From day one, the goal was simple: normalise the benefits of clean sanitation and empower households to make informed sanitation choices. As connecting household sewerage to a sanitation system/network is not compulsory in Indonesia, PERINTIS, through its training and socialization program achieved a Willingness to Connect level of 95% amongst householders, the highest recorded among all other sanitation programs in Indonesia

In many ways, the long-term success of the Palembang City Sanitation Project—and subsequently the new Wastewater Treatment Plant—relied on effective community engagement. If households were to increase demand for safe and improved sanitation infrastructure, they needed to understand the importance of safe and effective household sewerage connections and septic tank operations and maintenance.

The Power of Community Training

Across its four-year implementation period, PERINTIS brought a strong Gender, Equality, Disability, and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) lens to bolstering community support for the PCSP. A big part of this involved training delivery, as well as community socialisation and income generation across PCSP sites.

By program end, PERINTIS had delivered 348 training sessions across 33 courses, providing a little over 6,400 training places.

“Training as an effective tool for socialization is not widely practised or documented in Indonesia, yet PERINTIS did this so well. Training focused on building an understanding of the benefits of safe, clean, and reliable household sanitation through sewage connections,” explains Siti Ratna, PERINTIS Manager Training and Employment

“Over the lifetime of PERINTIS, we were able to track an increase in a training participant’s willingness to connect to the household sewerage system under the PCSP. This is a fantastic result. Training alumni are using the skills to change the ways they think about sanitation, are more confident in advocating for better services, and are drawing on their new knowledge of PCSP,” she says.

Training and capacity building was also offered to local government partner agencies, and the program held 11 local government working group meetings where key stakeholders could discuss progress, challenges and solutions. PERINTIS designed and built a training center at the Water and Sanitation Authority, as an inclusive venue for teaching and learning about household connections and septic operations and maintenance. This engagement was key to promoting sanitation more widely.

Other program activities included community exhibitions using the PERINTIS mobile demonstration units; skills-based training on plumbing, tiling, brick and stone; waste recycling and income generation; and local government approved information campaigns.

Inclusive Communication Materials

In celebration of Indonesia’s National Day of Deaf People on 11 January in 2024, PERINTIS produced a video highlighting its approach to creating inclusive and accessible Information, Education and Communication materials for the Palembang community. Several of these community members were known to have a disability – including hearing impairments.

“The video was incredibly well received both within communities and local government. It featured Ms. Ade, a PERINTIS training partner and well-known member of the Palembang deaf community,” adds Nindy Voristya, PERINTIS GEDSI Coordinator.

“In just four minutes, it explained all the steps involved in running inclusive training. It also showed how to set up a confidential reporting system so participants can seek assistance if need be. It’s a really powerful product.”

Not only that, the video highlighted the importance of cross-sector collaboration between infrastructure, construction and education – something PERINTIS championed at every step of program delivery.

Over the final nine months of the project, PERINTIS handed over to the Palembang Government its entire training and socialisation curriculum and materials through a program of intensive training and development. The commitment of Palembang’s Department of Public Works and the Water and Sanitation Authority is assured as the sewerage pipe network expands into other areas within the Palembang City Sanitation Project to service the remaining 20,000 potential customers over the next decade.

The team explains that this was one of the key planned outcomes of PERINTIS.

But the program went well beyond what was planned an extended to several ‘unplanned’ outcomes, which arose from intense PERINTIS community engagement and training such as Women in Leadership, Disability Awareness, Waste Recycling and Skills Development. In response to this engagement, local community-based NGOs developed cooperative new programmes such as soap manufacture, credit unions, and collective advocacy to local government to gain improved services for people with disabilities.

These unplanned outcomes have been harnessed and supported through Palladium’s Let’s Make it Possible Program in partnership with the Kyeema Foundation – specifically, the Our Communities Fund. Four NGO’s, the Women’s Crisis Centre, the Women-led Community Centre, the three waste recycling NGOs and the Women’s Disability Association are establishing a cooperative to manufacture and market recyclable menstrual pads and soaps throughout South Sumatra. Disadvantaged women from the community and women who have fled domestic violence, and are sheltering at the Crisis Centre, will learn transferable skills to improve their income generation capacity within a supportive community-based environment.

Ultimately, the Palembang City Sanitation Project, supported by PERINTIS, demonstrates how inclusive community engagement and targeted training can drive transformative change in urban sanitation. By empowering households and local stakeholders, the initiative has laid a strong foundation for sustainable infrastructure and social innovation across South Sumatra for years to come.