'1,000 trucks with RI illegal logs go to Malaysia each week'

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Kalimantan loses at least 1,000 truck loads of illegal logs every week or about 10,000 cubic meters in the last two months, says a forest ministry official.

"Those trucks are certainly carrying logs from our national parks including Betung Kerihun National Park on the border of Indonesia and Malaysia. The trucks easily pass through our country's check points to Malaysia," Koes Saparjadi told reporters here over the weekend.

The director general for forest protection and conservation at the Ministry of Forestry said on Friday that the ministry could not confiscate the trucks as it only had the authority to arrest them within the forest.

The smuggling causes millions of dollars in losses to the government, Koes said.

He said the illegal logs were mainly those locally known Meranti logs and estimated the losses caused would amount to Rp 1 billion (US$117,000) per week.

Koes said if his ministry failed to stop the trucks within the national parks, tax and customs office and the immigration office had the authority to stop and detain them as they crossed the border.

Malaysia has seemingly not taken any measures against the truck owners, who are Malaysians, he said.

The only thing he would be able to do because of the legal limitations, he said, was to increase monitoring against illegal loggers while they were still in the country's forested areas.

Some of the ministry's forest rangers have acquired supernatural powers that enable them to detect illegal loggers who are said to be able to make themselves disappear using black magic, he added.

Illegal logging in Indonesia's rain forests and national parks has been a major headache especially after the deterioration of law and order when the Asian economic crisis hit the country in mid 1997.

Some 43 million hectares of its 120.35 million hectares of forest have been devastated by illegal logging, with a degradation rate of 2.1 million hectares per year.

The illicit activities have inflicted losses of Rp 30 trillion per year to the country, more than enough to subsidize fuel prices.

The fuel compensation funds for this year stood only at Rp 4.4 trillion.

A report last year said that Malaysia, China and Japan were the top three recipients of Indonesia's illegal logs.

The Ministry of Forestry has said that the illegal loggers had formed mafia-like international networks in Indonesia and that their operations were hard to track down.

Illegal loggers could face a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of Rp 200 million as stipulated by the 1990 Law on Conservation.

Koes went on to say that this week, ministry officials would leave for South Korea to talk about a possible agreement to prevent illegal logs from Indonesia from entering South Korea.

Last year, the government signed an agreement with Malaysia, whose plywood industry is said to rely on illegal logs from Indonesia.

The government has also signed an agreement with the United Kingdom and the European Union to boost efforts to protect the forests and curb illegal logging activities.