Environmental auditing is voluntary: Bapedal
JAKARTA (JP): The government has no intention of compelling industrial companies to undertake environmental auditing, stressing that it is strictly voluntary.
Rusdian Lubis of the Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) said in a seminar that the audits are meant to ensure the implementation of the environment management and monitoring plans.
He said the government regulation on the Environmental Impact Assessment (Amdal) requires industrial companies to have such plans.
Lubis made the remarks in a discussion on environmental auditing, the first of a series of conferences held by the Indonesian Forum of Environment (Walhi) to celebrate its 14th anniversary.
"We have already had a lot of mandatory policies. Why don't we make the environmental auditing policy voluntary?" said Lubis, who heads Bapedal's development control and monitoring of the environmental impact assessment section.
He said that environmental auditing was expected to become a technical management tool for the companies to show the public that they care about the environment.
The companies are expected to implement the policy introduced by the government late last year once they realize its advantages, he said.
The government, however, can have a company audited if there are strong allegations that it is damaging the environment, he added.
So far there are three companies have been ordered to undergo audits: PT Inti Indorayon Utama, a pulp and rayon plant, and two international mining companies, PT Freeport Indonesia and PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia.
This does not necessarily mean that there are only three companies which pollute the environment, Lubis said, adding that more industrial firms might be told to do the same.
Slack
Lubis agreed to a participants' comment that enforcement of the environmental laws was still slack.
The problems have to do with the lack of knowledge on environment and the political climate which is not conducive for the implementation of sustainable development principles, he said.
Willy Chan from the Labbat & Anderson American Consultant, said that he had finished auditing PT Inti Indorayon Utama, and had submitted the results to the government.
Even though the environmental auditing is not mandatory, there are several companies which have done it.
Representatives from the Pertamina state oil company and PT Astra, a private company, said that they had made the internal environment audits long before the policy was introduced by the government.
Khalid Mohamad, an executive of Walhi's regional forum, praised Pertamina's concern with the environment, but deplored the fact that the firm did nothing to prevent pollution by its contractors.
He said that one of Pertamina's contractors, Mobil Oil, was believed to have been heavily polluting a river in North Sumatra. (sim)