Haze turns day into night in Sumatra island
JAKARTA (JP): Thick haze from forest fires shrouded several towns in Sumatra on Friday, keeping Pekanbaru, Riau, mostly in the dark during daylight hours.
By 9 a.m. most homes in the provincial capital were using lights and vehicles on the roads were forced to turn on their headlights.
Antara reported that rain later in the evening did not wash away the dense smog, which has been declared a natural disaster by the government.
Volunteers and city employees handed out cotton surgical masks to commuters and pedestrians to reduce the potential of respiratory ailments.
According to the Haze Monitoring Center at the Meteorology and Geophysics Office, the thick haze spread over Padang, West Sumatra, and the regencies of Bengkalis, Indragiri Hilir and Indragiri Hulu in Riau.
There were also reports of it reaching towns in West Kalimantan.
Many fear a repeat of the region-wide catastrophe brought on by haze from forest fires in 1997.
The Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) said there were 515 hot spots in Riau, from a total of 711 on the island of Sumatra and 42 in Kalimantan.
Despite the assistance of emergency fire-fighting teams, hundreds of hectares of national park and plantations in West Sumatra are up in smoke.
Although the haze has darkened parts of Sumatra since last week, hospitals have yet to report any major increase in health problems, particularly patients seeking treatment for respiratory disorders.
Meanwhile, the secretary-general of the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations, Soeripto, said in Pekanbaru that four forestry firms were to blame for the forest fires.
Antara quoted him identifying the companies as PT Musi Mas, PT Inti Indosawit, PT ADEI and PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa.
"Their permits can be revoked, if necessary," Soeripto said.
President Abdurrahman Wahid has promised to do everything possible to prevent another ecological disaster on the scale of three years ago, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Alwi Shihab reiterated on Friday that the government would take stern measures against errant firms.
Action
The haze is raising concern in neighboring Singapore and parts of Malaysia.
In Bangkok, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) lauded on Friday Indonesia's move to punish the companies.
"The Indonesian government's intention to summon logging and plantation company owners and to review their licenses is the kind of tough measures needed to preempt another crisis," UNEP Asia-Pacific regional director Nirmal Andrews said in a statement as quoted by Reuters.
In its statement, UNEP said the authorities detected about 1,200 fires on Sumatra and Kalimantan, and that the haze from the fires had driven the pollution index on the islands above the 300 mark, a level considered unhealthy.
It was also reported that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said on Friday it put into operation its fire suppression mobilization measures in Riau to contain the spread of the fires and haze.
Environment ministers of the 10-member grouping intend to hold a meeting addressing the haze problem in Brunei on April 4.
It is the latest in a series of informal talks among the ministers which began in 1998, when ASEAN launched a comprehensive action plan to tackle the haze problem.
The Meteorological Service Department of Singapore said its pollutants standards index was 41, a level where air quality is within a good range with no adverse health effects, despite some increase recorded in previous days.
Meanwhile, a senior Malaysian official said on Friday the country was not yet directly affected.
"The air quality is good, we are not affected by the fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan," environment ministry director-general Rosnani Ibrahim told AFP. (dja/01)