Island naming to take three years

JAKARTA: The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has set a target of three years to name some 9,000 unnamed islands, a ministry official said over the weekend.

""There are about 9,000 islands to be named from some 17,500 islands in the country,"" the ministry's director for small islands empowerment, Alex Retraubun, was quoted as saying by Antara news agency Friday.

""A team tasked to name the islands has been working for two years and has named all the islands in the three provinces of Gorontalo, North Sulawesi and South Sumatra.""

Alex said the effort needed long time because the islands were scattered across a vast expanse of Indonesia's territory.

""The team's progress will be reported to a United Nations meeting on the standardization of geographical names on Aug. 23,"" he said. -- JP