T

he government plans to punish 286 companies whose concessions have been burned up, saying that it will freeze or revoke their licenses following a three-month investigation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said on Friday that her ministry was now working to impose administrative penalties on the 286 concession holders, including halting the companies'€™ operations pending court verdicts on their cases as well as revoking and suspending their licenses.

'€œWe have identified the areas of the forest fires. The next step is to identify the companies, to get information regarding their owners, shareholders, commissioners, directors and so on. We are collecting the data at the moment,'€ she said.

Of the 286 companies, 90 hold industrial forest permits and production concessions, 49 hold land-conversion permits and 147 hold land-use permits.

Together, they are responsible for burning 191,993 hectares of land.

Siti said that the suspension or revocation of the licenses would be imposed on all types of permits, including those issued by other government agencies, such as the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry and regional governments.

She said that Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Ferry Mursyidan Baldan had agreed to freeze or revoke land-cultivation permits (HGU).

As for plantation business permits issued by heads of regional governments, the Environment and Forestry Ministry will issue recommendations to impose administrative sanctions against firms responsible for burning their land.

'€œAnd if the regional government appears hesitant about revoking the licenses, we will do it. We will give them three to seven days [to revoke the licenses],'€ Siti said.

In order to carry out the plan, the ministry has established a haze emergency national task force.

The task force has started investigating the burned concessions, and planned to impose administrative sanctions next week.

'€œI have promised four [sanctions] to be out this week but our investigators in the field had troubles returning to Jakarta yesterday. They will come back to Jakarta tomorrow and analyze [their findings immediately] over the weekend,'€ said Siti.

Earlier, Siti said that two companies operating in Riau and two others in South Sumatra would be slapped with administrative sanctions.

The decision to impose administrative sanctions before bringing the cases to court is something that is unprecedented. It is also a part of a grand plan set up by the central government to put an end to forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, areas that have struggled with worsening land and forest fires over the past 18 years.

On Friday, representatives from the people of Riau filed a report to the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), arguing that the government had failed to evacuate vulnerable children and pregnant women in Riau.

'€œThe report that we have received is that the people of Riau had to evacuate their children to Bukit Tinggi by themselves, without any aid from the government. The government should take responsibility in evacuating children and mothers because it'€™s impossible for them to live in Riau anymore with such high pollutant levels,'€ Komnas HAM internal deputy chairwoman, Siti Noor Laila, said.