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eatland and forest fires in Riau are still occurring despite a moratorium on logging activities being in force in the province since 2011.

Among the fires is one in Sumber Jaya subdistrict, Siak Kecil district, Bengkalis regency. Some 100 hectares of forest located in the peatland moratorium area have been on fire for three months.

'€œFor the last three months, rain has fallen on our village only three times. The peatland is very dry and easily burns,'€ Tarpan, a local, told The Jakarta Post, Sunday.

He said the fire had at one time been extinguished, but had reignited after only a few days. Once peatland catches fire, he said, it takes at least four hours of continuous rain to put it out.

The burning forest, Tarpan said, is part of 6,000 hectares of fields that in 1980 were allocated to 700 transmigration families.

However, the families lost the deeds to the land when recurrent floods hit the area in 1984.

'€œIndividual subdistrict administration employees in cooperation with regency administration officers later took advantage of the situation to take over the land, some of which was sold to brokers,'€ said Tarpan, adding that it was how fires started to hit the area frequently.

He said Bengkalis Police officers arrested three individuals last year for forest trespassing and burning. A year before, a local was tried for setting alight fields that later caused a fire in a surrounding forest.

'€œAnd yet the fires haven'€™t stopped,'€ said Tarpan.

Surprisingly, he added, someone always turned up to plant oil palms on the land once the fires were extinguished.

'€œIt is our conclusion that someone deliberately set the forest on fire ['€¦] to turn it into a plantation,'€ he said.

The same situation can be seen in another moratorium area in Tanjung Layang village, Tanjung Kuras subdistrict, Sungai Apit district, Siak regency, where hundreds of hectares of peatland have been allegedly taken over by civilians, civil servants and police personnel.

'€œI actually do not know about cultivation. I have just started to try. Hopefully this will not catch on fire like the neighboring fields,'€ said Bahtiar Tohong, a local public order officer claiming to have owned his field for eight months.

Greenpeace SEA Indonesia campaigner M. Teguh Surya urged the President to stop deforestation in areas included in the moratorium.

'€œThere are many things to do. It just does not make sense that a peatland forest in good condition could catch on fire despite the area being covered by the moratorium,'€ Teguh said.

He suggested that surveillance be improved and the issue of overlapping licenses addressed.

He also suggested the President review the presidential instruction (Inpres) on the moratorium and issue a presidential regulation (Perpres) to make the policy more binding to all elements of society and not just particular governmental institutions.