Government to Form Inter-Ministerial Team to Resolve Agrarian Conflicts

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Minister of State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi said the government will form a cross-ministerial team to address agrarian conflicts so that they can be resolved promptly.

The agreement to form the team came after cross-ministerial government officials met with DPR leadership together with the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) at the parliamentary complex in Jakarta on Tuesday. He stressed that agrarian or land issues must be resolved as soon as possible.

“The target is to cluster all of our agrarian problems as quickly as possible,” Prasetyo said after the meeting.

The meeting was attended by Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Nusron Wahid, Minister of Villages and Development of Disadvantaged Regions Yandri Susanto, and Minister of Forestry Raja Juli Antoni.

Prasetyo said other ministries will also be included in the team, namely the Ministry of Housing and Residential Areas.

He explained that the team will classify agrarian conflicts occurring in various regions based on the level of difficulty in resolving them. Naturally, he said, the easiest conflicts are targeted for rapid completion.

“Those will be asked to be resolved in parallel using existing mechanisms, which of course each ministry already has, for example ATR/BPN already has its own mechanism,” Prasetyo said.

He cited the example of around 73,000 hectares of land that is currently rice fields but whose land status falls within forest areas. He considered this should be easy to resolve quickly.

Meanwhile, Nusron said there are three types of agrarian conflicts that typically occur: disputes over forest areas, conflicts involving state-owned enterprise (BUMN) assets or state assets, and conflicts with private parties.

For problems involving private parties, he considered them relatively easy to resolve. Meanwhile, conflicts involving state assets are quite difficult because they can lead to corruption issues.

“So, the problem is when it involves claims against BUMN assets or state-owned assets such as those belonging to the National Police. Because there are legal complications, there are state finance laws and so on,” Nusron said.