NGOs say efforts to simplify environmental regulations should not come at the expense of sustainability, which they argue is under threat from the Job Creation Law.
major business group has raised concerns about implementing regulations of the Job Creation Law, particularly with regard to environmental protection.
Rather than streamlining procedures, new rules made compliance more cumbersome, the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) said, pointing to the sluggish issuance of environmental impact assessments (Amdal) as a case in point.
NGOs, meanwhile, suggest the delayed approval of Amdal requests may be due to resource constraints within the Environment Ministry and say efforts to simplify environmental regulations should not come at the expense of sustainability, which they argue is already under threat from the Job Creation Law itself.
Apindo deputy chairman Sanny Iskandar claimed that the current bureaucracy and regulatory framework was worse than it had been before the enactment of the Job Creation Law.
While he acknowledged the law’s intent to simplify procedures, he argued that its implementing regulations instead made things more complicated, dragging out the approval process for spatial planning permits, building permits and more.
“Another issue, which the Coordinating Economic Minister [Airlangga Hartarto], [former coordinating maritime affairs and investment minister] Luhut Pandjaitan and even former president [Joko “Jokowi” Widodo] were already aware of, is related to the Amdal.
“Thousands of Amdal proposals are currently stuck at the Environment Ministry, and that is extraordinary,” he said at Apindo’s Economic Outlook briefing on Thursday.
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