Indonesia Revises Regulations on Managing Forest Fires

Jakarta, 17 Sya’ban 1437/25 May 2016 (MINA) – The ministerial regulations on the management of forest fires have been reviewed following last year’s transboundary haze disaster that cost the Indonesian economy billions of dollars and affected millions of people in Indonesia and parts of Southeast Asia.

All stakeholders – from local administrators to companies that own the concessions – were summoned to the forestry ministry on Tuesday (May 24) to be briefed on the revisions.

A major part of the revisions revolves around placing greater responsibility on plantation companies to detect and prevent fires, CNA ws quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

“In this Ministerial Regulation No. 32, we have made it compulsory for companies to involve communities in fire prevention programmes,” said Raffles Panjaitan, director of forest fire prevention at the ministry. “It was compulsory before, but their capacity was not increased. There’s better technology now. We can use satellite technology. There’s also CCTV using thermal camera. Previously, monitoring was done from a fire tower.”

These revised regulations give authorities a firmer hand in dealing with errant companies and individuals.

More coordinated forest patrols have also been launched in more than 500 villages in fire-prone Sumatra and Kalimantan. With these provisions in place, Jakarta wants to demonstrate that it is able to tackle forest fires on its own.

“We hope there’s mutual respect between governments,” said the ministry’s secretary-general, Bambang Hedroyono. “We have done many things with the same intention (that) there’ll be no more smoke and fire. And that is what we want to show. We are working very hard in the concession and non-concession areas.”

There has been unhappiness in some quarters in Jakarta over Singapore’s move to initiate legal action against Indonesian companies that allegedly caused last year’s haze. Some Indonesian officials see it as harassment.

It is also said to have triggered Jakarta’s review of its collaboration with Singapore on preventing forest fires in Sumatra. A ministry official said the review will be completed in about a week’s time.

With the revised ministerial regulations now in place, Jakarta may have less reason to join forces with its neighbour to tackle forest fires. (T/R07/R01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)