Controversial plantation bill to be endorsed soon

Controversial plantation bill to be endorsed soon

Zakki P. Hakim, Jakarta

House of Representatives Commission III for plantations,
agriculture, forestry and fishery affairs and the Ministry of
Agriculture approved a controversial plantation bill on Tuesday,
which will likely be endorsed at a plenary session next Monday.

Commission III spokesperson Awal Kusumah claimed that the
country's first ever plantation law, if endorsed, would provide
legal certainty for the industry.

"It will protect the interest of small-scale farmers and boost
investment in the agribusiness sector," Awal said on Tuesday.

But critics said that the bill, which was an initiative of the
legislators, was more focused on protecting the interest of
plantation companies at the expense of traditional landowners and
small farmers.

"We cannot accept the plantation bill," Ivan Valentina Ageung,
a senior official at the RACA Institute, told The Jakarta Post.

The RACA Institute and a number of other non-governmental
organizations like the Working Group of National Independent
Farmers and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute have recently
published a book to campaign against the bill.

One of the most contentious issues in the bill is a clause
allowing plantation companies to obtain concession rights for up
to 35 years.

"This means plantation companies would no longer just use the
land but they'd be practically owners (of the land) if they were
given such a lengthy concession period," Ivan said.

(Investors had actually demanded a concession period of more
than 90 years like in Malaysia and China).

The bill also allows plantation companies to set up their own
security guards to protect their assets. Critics also feat that
it could encourage the formation of groups of thugs protecting
land that is still in dispute with the traditional land owners.

Ivan said that instead of approving the controversial bill,
the government should have reviewed all existing regulations and
laws related to agrarian and natural resource affairs as it had
not protected the interest of traditional land owners or
traditional tribes.

"Traditional land owners need recognition from the government
to protect their land from big plantation companies," he said.

Although the government launched a national program of land
certification to help land owners across the country obtain legal
documents for their assets, the program was not implemented
properly, particularly in rural areas, leaving traditional land
owners in those areas holding only girik (title of land
ownerships) instead of certificates, said Ivan.

In most such disputes, girik never won against concession
documents granted by the government to plantation companies, he
said.

Minister of Agriculture Bungaran Saragih dismissed suggestion
that the bill was aimed merely at protecting the interest of
plantation firms.

"It is not for the interest of plantation companies, but for
all parties in the industry," he said.

Bungaran however, said he was aware that small-scale farmers
and traditional tribes and society's rights of land should be
prioritized and that he agreed that there should be a law
protecting their rights.

"However, we have not yet seen any draft regulating
traditional tribes' land rights," he said.