nvironment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said on Tuesday that the government this year planned to hand over 2 million hectares of forest land to local residents to be used for other functions.
“It is a large number and the progress is fast. The handover of the 2 million hectares of land must be completed in 2018,” Siti said in Jakarta as reported by kotan.co.id.
About 900,000 hectares of forest land was ready for verification, the minister said, adding that her ministry had deployed a large number of workers to speed up the process.
Siti added that about 1.4 million hectares of forest was ready for to be converted – both in Java and outside Java, including 100,000 hectares of customary land.
As part of the land reform, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has implemented a land certification program to distribute land certificates to Indonesian citizens. The government claimed to have certified 4.2 million plots of land last year from the total target of 5 million.
Land status issues continue to pose a challenge to the implementation of the land certification program. The conversion of forests is expected to contribute to the government's target to issue 7 million land certificates this year. (bbn)
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