Repeal sought for 146 plantation concession licenses<\/p>\n
Rusman, The Jakarta Post, Samarinda, East Kalimantan<\/p>\n
An official here called on Wednesday for the regency and
\nmayoralty governments in the province to revoke plantation
\nconcessionaire licenses that have already been issued to 146
\nfirms.<\/p>\n
The licenses are to be revoked on the grounds that the 146
\nfirms had failed to meet requirements by the government to
\nperform reforestation in the concession areas, said Ismet
\nBarakhbah, the head of South Kalimantan Plantation Office.<\/p>\n
\"They only pulled down the trees, but they then failed to
\ncarry out the reforestation program in the area,\" he said.<\/p>\n
The concessionaire area given to the 146 firms consists of a
\nvast area of 2,503,686 hectares in the province.<\/p>\n
Ismet said that the request to the regency and mayoralty
\nadministrations was made, on the grounds that they had the
\nauthority to revoke the licenses.<\/p>\n
Ismet said that the regency and mayoralty administrations in
\nthe province previously revoked plantation concessionaire
\nlicenses for 20 firms last year, with a total area of 275,165
\nhectares.<\/p>\n
They operated in Berau regency (12 firms), Pasir regency (6
\nfirms) and Nunukan regency (2 firms).<\/p>\n
Separately, a special environmental committee at the East
\nKalimantan provincial council received on Tuesday a report filed
\nby Pasir and Berau regency administrations on illegal logging,
\nthe first since its establishment last week.<\/p>\n
Ridwan Suwidi, a provincial councillor and a member of the
\nSpecial Committee on the Environment, said the two
\nadministrations filed a complaint against the fast pace of
\nillegal logging activities in their areas, which could rapidly
\ndegrade the environment there.<\/p>\n
However, he declined to reveal any data on the illegal logging
\nin the two regencies, as the special committee was still studying
\nit. A recent statement by an official from the Ministry of
\nForestry has suggested that the environmental damage on
\nKalimantan has reached an alarming level.<\/p>\n
Koes Saparjadi, Director General for Forest Protection and
\nConservation at the Ministry of Forestry, said Kalimantan lost at
\nleast 1,000 truck loads -- or about 10,000 cubic meters -- of
\nillegal logs every week, in the May-June period alone.<\/p>\n
The trucks carry the illegally harvested logs from Kalimantan
\nto neighboring Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Illegal logging in Indonesia's rain forests and national parks
\nhas been a major headache, especially after law and order
\ndeteriorated after the Asian economic crisis of 1997.<\/p>\n
Of its 120.35 million hectares of natural rain forest, 43
\nmillion hectares have been devastated by illegal logging at a
\nrate of 2.1 million hectares annually. The illicit activity has
\ncaused the country annual losses of Rp 30 trillion.<\/p>",
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