Govt vows to prosecute 10 firms over forest fires

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government promised on Monday to prosecute 10 plantation companies -- eight of them Malaysian -- accused of burning forests on Sumatra island, causing a choking haze over parts of the neighboring country.

"The Office of the State Minister for the Environment is currently investigating the companies. The ministry will soon file pollution charges against them," Minister of Forestry Malam Sambat Kaban said at the Presidential Office in Jakarta on Monday.

He said the 10 companies were accused of deliberately setting fires to clear the land to open oil palm plantations.

Kaban said the eight accused Malaysian companies had concessions for more than 200,000 hectares of land in Sumatra.

The government has outlawed the clearing of land by burning but often fails to prosecute or imprison plantation owners and logging firms accused of violating the law.

Officials have frequently vowed to bring companies to court but no action has ever been taken, and the fires eventually are extinguished with the arrival of the rainy season.

Environmentalists said the real test would come when the companies were brought to court, and urged the government to release the names of the 10 firms.

"It is a good start," Nazir Foead of the World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia said as quoted by AP. "A year ago, 10 companies were investigated for illegal burning but the cases disappeared into thin air. When the fires are gone and the rainy season comes, I hope there will be the same commitment and eagerness to enforce the law."

Noxious haze from the Sumatra forest fires has covered parts of Malaysia since last week, sparking mounting anger among residents there, as the smoke has disrupted their daily activities.

Kaban said data from the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Polonia Medan, North Sumatra, indicated the number of hot spots in Sumatra had decline from about 700 last week to 300 in the past two days.

To put out the blazes, Kaban said Indonesia and Malaysia would try and induce rain next week in North Sumatra and Riau, the two provinces worst affected by the fires.

"Aside from deploying firefighters to the affected areas, we are going to jointly make rain next week. Malaysia will also send special machines to clear land without burning," he said.