T

he Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) has set up a team to help prosecutors at the provincial level handle cases of individuals and companies involved in forest and peatland fires.

Attorney General M. Prasetyo said that the team would supervise how ongoing cases were being handled to ensure they yielded optimum results.

'€œThe team will supervise all provincial prosecutor'€™s offices in the country,'€ Prasetyo said.

He said that all stages of prosecution needed to be strengthened '€” from drafting the indictment until the actual prosecution '€” as forest and land-fire cases had caused massive damage and material losses.

Prasetyo, however, said that the progress of forest-fire cases would continue to largely depend on the investigations initiated by the National Police.

National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said earlier that several of the investigations into individuals allegedly involved in the forest burning had wrapped up and would soon be taken to court.

The police are currently working on 238 cases related to forest and peatland fires. Of the 238 cases, 191 involved individual perpetrators while 47 involved corporations, including a number of foreign companies.

The police have named 205 suspects in individual cases, and 11 suspects in the corporate cases. At least 72 people have been detained.

The AGO claimed to have only handled three cases pertaining to the forest fires, whereas regional prosecutor'€™s offices handled the rest.

Separately, the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry has come up with preventive measures that the government could use to deal with peatland and forest fires.

According to Minister M. Nasir, the ministry will set up a national research consortium tasked to prevent the spread of forest and land fires, taking advantage of research that had been conducted by universities in the country.

Nasir said recommendations from research on forest fires had rarely been implemented.

'€œEvery year, the forest fires continue to rage. That is why we are setting up a research consortium to optimize the work in implementing [recommendations from the research]. There will also be legal experts who'€™ll be able to explain what sanctions are called for in cases of intentional burning,'€ Nasir said at a press conference on Thursday.

The minister said that specific tasks would be divided among the participating institutions, according to their research field. Among the subjects are health, education and peatland management.

The initiative was a response to President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s recent instruction to all relevant government institutions to start working on measures that could prevent the repeat of annual forest and peatland fires, with only eight months left before the next dry season starts.