Floods wash away nine houses in Riau

Haidir Anwar Tanjung, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau

Recent flooding in the Riau regencies of Indragiri Hulu and Pelalawan, extended to several districts, washing away nine houses and inundating nearly 300 other buildings, including mosques and schools.

More than 3,700 residents of the Pranap district in Indragiri Hulu regency were evacuated after their houses were inundated on Monday.

No casualties have been reported in this week's flooding in those districts.

"The flood in Pranap swept away nine houses and submerged 174 others, 43 mosques and 62 school buildings. School activities will be conducted in temporary tents erected by local authorities in safer areas where the evacuees are being accommodated," stated Indragiri Hulu regent R. Thamsir Rachman in a dialog between local officials and visiting Vice President Hamzah Haz here on Tuesday.

Two people were killed, around 71,000 people were evacuated and more than 6,250 houses and other buildings were inundated by floods that hit the two regencies over the last two weeks. The floods have also paralyzed traffic along an 82-kilometer section of the Trans-Sumatra Highway connecting Pekanbaru and Jambi.

Pranap is one of six districts in Indragiri Hulu regency, and was the worst hit by the floods. The five other districts are Rengat, West Rengat, Pasir Penyu, Kelayang and Selayang.

Thamsir said that the floods in several other districts in the regency had started to recede, but the condition in the six districts was still threatening because water levels had reached 1.5 meters in some areas.

He said his administration was considering extra pay as an incentive for teachers to provide classes for students in the makeshift schools, especially as many students need to prepare for final exams over the next two months.

Speaking about the causes of the flooding, Thamsir criticized the rampant illegal logging and the rapid conversion of forests into plantations, causing the Indragiri and Kampar Rivers to overflow during the rainy season.

He said the central government and the provincial administration should tighten the issuance of licenses for private-run plantation companies to convert forests into plantations in the province.

"The province has been hit by floods over the last decade since the government began giving out large numbers of licenses, or concessions, to private companies to convert forests into palm oil plantations and farmland.

"A huge part of the forests that functioned as catchment areas in the past have disappeared while most of the swampy land -- also effective catchment areas -- along the province's coastal areas have been utilized for farming and human settlement," he said.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has predicted that the natural forests in the province could disappear within five years unless the issuance of forest concessions and the rampant illegal logging, especially in Kerinci Seblat and Bukit Tiga Puluh National Parks in the province were halted.