Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 08/28/2008 10:07 AM
New hospitals will no longer have to obtain an environmental impact analysis (Amdal) to open up shop, as the government has exempted this pursuit -- and 24 others -- from the list of activities requiring the document.
Under the previous policy, businesses needed at least one year to obtain an Amdal to build a hospital.
The State Ministry of the Environment, which has long complained about the poor environmental performances of many companies in the country, said the Amdal requirement had been exempted from 25 activities in 14 business sectors since last year.
"They (these activities) no longer need an Amdal to obtain licenses," Hermien Rosita, deputy for the environmental management at the ministry, told reporters here Wednesday.
"We have excluded them from the list because we can predict potential environmental impacts of their operations, and technologies are ready to resolve them."
She said dangerous infections or domestic waste from the hospital, for example, could be addressed by using the incinerator facilities.
Among the activities scrapped on the new list of exemptions include those of hospitals, cement firms, train stations and undersea cable installments.
Previously, 85 businesses in 14 sectors were obliged to secure Amdal documents in order to obtain operating permits.
"The Amdal document is now a must only for 60 activities. But this is still too many compared with only four activities in the United States. We will continue to cut the list every five years," Hermien said.
She said her office was currently revitalizing the Amdal to help protect the environment, while also considering ways to enforce the law more effectively.
"We propose legal sanctions, such as up to 10 years' imprisonment for developers who violate Amdal requirements," Hermien said.
The ministry had previously been the only state institution authorized to award Amdal documents for business activities across the archipelago.
But since the move to decentralization in 2001, local administrations have been responsible for Amdal licenses in their areas.
The ministry found that only about a quarter of the country's more than 460 municipalities and regencies had established Amdal councils due to poor human resources.
The ministry said that of the 115 Amdal councils in the country, about half of them had never issued Amdal documents because no businesses applied for them.
Ade Fadli of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said Amdal implementation was very poor in local areas.
"I attended several meetings of Amdal councils in Kalimantan, and I found that some Amdal reports were duplicated from the previous documents, but there were no legal actions taken by the government," he said.
The executive secretary of the Center for Research of Human Resources and the Environment at the University of Indonesia, Suyud Warno Utomo, expressed similar concerns over the poor quality of human resources in dealing with Amdal documents.
"Many Amdal council members did not touch the main subject of the report during consultations. They only corrected minor mistakes such as semicolons or typos," he said.
Hermien said the environment ministry would certify all officials, including those in local areas, to improve their capacity to make Amdal reports.
She said developers would not need to wait for more than a year to get Amdal documents. "By involving a number of experts, the Amdal process could be completed in just two weeks."
