TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Police chiefs to be removed if forest fires persist: Govt
The government is ramping up efforts to prevent and douse forest and land fires amid close scrutiny from neighboring countries as Indonesia expects the dry season to peak within the next two months
Change Size
T
span>The government is ramping up efforts to prevent and douse forest and land fires amid close scrutiny from neighboring countries as Indonesia expects the dry season to peak within the next two months.
Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto said after leading a coordination meeting on forest and land fires on Wednesday that the country had seen an increase in hot spots this month compared to the same period last year, which was partly attributed to the weak El Niño that led to a prolonged dry season spell across the country.
“President [Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo] has told local administrations not to solely rely on the central government. Regional leaders should take more active roles. We’ve warned that regional police chiefs who aren’t able to handle [forest and land fires] will be removed from their positions,” he said.
The Terra and Aqua satellites detected 2,070 hotspots between January and July this year, up 54.71 percent from the 1,338 recorded over the same period last year.
The spots were largely detected in Riau, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, according to the satellite data, but Wiranto said the increase was also attributed to an anomaly of hundreds of newly discovered spots in East Nusa Tenggara. He said that the new spots in the region should not cause worry as they had come from thatch burning that did not produce smog.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said it had deployed 37 water-bombing helicopters to help extinguish fires from above, slightly more than the 31 it deployed last year.
Wiranto said the capacity of the aircraft was bigger than that of the ones provided last year, as current weather reports by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) had yet to indicate the possibility of creating artificial rain amid the absence of clouds. The BMKG predicted that rainfall would not come until October.
Although the dry season had a role in making forests and peatlands more susceptible to fire, Wiranto said a majority of the fires were human-made. He said land clearing by burning had become a tradition among growers, highlighting the importance of a mindset change among farmers.
“Local administrations and large [plantation] firms should encourage [independent farmers] into becoming plasma [farmers] so that they don’t have to clear the land by burning. These corporations have many large excavators that could be used by [the farmers] for land clearing, instead of resorting to burning,” he said, adding that the excavators deployed by the Agriculture Ministry would not be enough to cover the vast area of farmland.
Plasma farmers refer to farmers who work on land provided by surrounding companies, which also provide technical support, while the farmers would have to sell their yields to the companies at a price set by the government.
Land clearing by burning was not exclusive to independent farmers who lacked resources. Wiranto said five corporations would face trial, while another 37 had been warned so as to not resort to illegal means for land clearing. He acknowledged that law enforcement had not been able to establish a deterrence, especially in individual cases.
The Wednesday meeting also discussed emergency response costs, although the minister refused to disclose any figures. He said funding would be used, among other things, to pay incentives to about 23,000 workers deployed in fire-prone areas to help prevent and extinguish fires. The workers were personnel of BNPB, police and military, among others, who were paid Rp 145,000 (US$10) per day.
The retired general said the government was doing its best to take care of the “world’s lungs” as part of its “international responsibility”.
Indonesia is currently on the brink of another haze crisis, a repeat of the 2015 crisis, which also sent smog to neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.
Malaysian-based newspaper The Star reported on Aug. 2 that smog claimed to have come from forest fires in Riau had affected several cities in Malaysia.
Wiranto, however, dismissed such concerns, adding that the Foreign Ministry had not received complaints from neighboring countries.
The Health Ministry, he said, had also provided 16 posts and 35 shelters in fire-prone areas to tend to affected locals.
BNPB head Lt. Gen. Doni Monardo said that as of July 31, 135,000 hectares, mostly peatland, were burning.
He said preventive measures by all parties, starting from local religious figures to corporations, needed to be enforced to prevent the 2015 haze crisis from repeating, which had badly affected the health of hundreds of thousands of people.
Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) head Nazir Foead said that the government was working to prevent farmers from burning by providing them with access to “spoilage bacteria”.
The bacteria would help speed up the decomposition of cut-down plants to within three weeks, so that farmers did not have to use the relatively high-priced excavators or burn their land.
“We are still teaching farmers in 70 villages in Kalimantan and Sumatra. The bacteria are provided by the Environment Ministry, BRG or the agricultural agency,” he said.
