Govt to relocate parts of Ladia Galaska road

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is planning to relocate sections of the controversial Ladia Galaska road project to minimize destruction in Gunung Leuser National Park, a cabinet minister has said.

It was not immediately clear, however, if the sections would be relocated away from the park, with Minister of Forestry M. Prakosa saying only that the matter would be decided later.

"One section to be relocated is a 14-kilometer stretch of road in East Aceh," Prakosa said before meeting President Megawati Soekarnoputri on Monday.

"Apart from that section, some others pass through river basins and might be relocated as well," Prakosa said.

The Ladia Galaska road project connects Meulaboh on the Indian Ocean side of Aceh with Perlak on the Malacca Strait, via Takengon, Blangkejeren, Pinding and Lokop.

Almost half of the route passes through Gunung Leuser National Park, especially the part linking Blangkejeren, Pinding, Lokop and Penaron in East Aceh.

Prakosa said the decision to relocate some parts of the road was taken after he, along with State Minister of the Environment Nabiel Makarim and Minister of Settlement and Regional Infrastructure Soenarno, visited the site.

He also said that a team from his office would leave for the Ladia Galaska project area on Tuesday to study the project.

"The team will make a full feasibility study on the routes and is slated to complete the analysis by Dec. 31, before we decide where to relocate the roads," Prakosa said.

The Ladia Galaska project has come under public scrutiny following the recent Bahorok flash flood that caused the death of over 130 people in Langkat regency, North Sumatra, last week.

Prakosa, however, suggested on Monday that the controversial road project had nothing to do with the incident, which has left over 100 people missing.

"Ladia Galaska is located far away from Langkat; there is no connection at all, so we shall continue with the project," he said.

A study by the Leuser Management Unit (UML) said that massive deforestation, including that for the road project, had caused the flash flood.

Earlier, Nabiel said that the road project should be stopped, underlining that it would also open up access for illegal loggers to transport their stolen logs.

Soenarno, however, defended the project, saying that the people of East Aceh needed the road to end their isolation and improve the transportation infrastructure.

The three ministers agreed on Monday that the Bahorok flood was a natural disaster that had nothing to do with the Ladia Galaska road project.

"From the site we visited, we saw that trees had been uprooted by heavy rain, so it was not because of illegal logging," Nabiel said on Monday.

Remote sensing expert from the National Survey and Mapping Agency (Bakorsurtanal) Aris Poniman said that satellite photos showed that the forest at Leuser was in a good state.

"However, the slopes in the mountain have an incline of more than 70 degrees; with heavy rains there can be flash floods. In Langkat such landslides occur every 10 years," Aris said.

He emphasized that the disaster had occurred because people had settled in the area, which lay in the path of a river.

"The same kind of flash flooding also occurs in Papua all the time but receives very little publicity because nobody lives there," Aris said.