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Firms given two years to come clean
The government has warned companies operating without environmental standards to start complying with environmental regulations, giving them a two-year grace period before it starts revoking business permits
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he government has warned companies operating without environmental standards to start complying with environmental regulations, giving them a two-year grace period before it starts revoking business permits.
Companies without environmental impact assessment (EIA) have until October 2011 to submit an environmental audit.
“Two years is more than enough time for companies to prepare an environmental audit,” Ilyas Asaad, an environmental compliance official at the Environment Ministry said Thursday.
The audit will assess businesses’ levels of compliance with government policies to protect the environment.
“If they fail to meet the deadline, the companies will be deemed as operating illegally. We will impose sanctions as stipulated in the 2009 Environmental Law,” he said.
Ilyas said there were thousands companies believed to be operating without EIAs.
The need for an environmental audit is stipulated in the 2009 Environmental Law, which says that if businesses fail to fulfill their obligations on environmental audits, the Environment Ministry can assign an independent auditor to assess the company.
The ministry is currently drafting a decree on the audit for companies without EIAs that have been operating since before the law came into effect in 2009.
Ilyas said small-scale companies operating without the environmental management scheme (UKL) and the environmental monitoring scheme (UPL) should also submit environmental audits.
The EIA, UKL and UPL are required to determine whether business activities are environmentally feasible in a particular area.
The EIA contains analysis of the expected impact of business activity in the area and the plans to manage and monitor environmental aspects.
The documents are required for the issuance of environmental permits, which are used to secure the business license.
The law stipulates officials who issue business permit without environmental licenses could face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a Rp 3 billion fine.
Activists, including from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) and the Indonesia Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) have repeatedly asked the government to enforce the 2009 law to help protect the environment.
Preliminary findings by the Environment Ministry of small-scale mining firms in Kalimantan found that most of the companies didn’t have EIAs.
But no action has been taken a month after Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta made an unscheduled visit to examine illegal mining in Kalimantan.
Kalimantan, the province with the richest coal deposits, has long been under pressure to better regulate the huge and overlapping licenses awarded to companies to exploit coal.
Data from the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) showed nine regents in South Kalimantan province granted principal permits to 229 mining companies, allowing them to mine for coal in 200,000 hectares of the protected Meratus forest.
It said East Kalimantan, with only 19.8 million hectares of land, granted overlapping permits, mainly to mining and plantation firms covering 21.7 million hectares.
