KDM: Forest and Land Fires Caused by Poor Planning

BANDUNG — West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi has commented on forest and land fires (karhutla) in Kalimantan, West Java and other areas. He said engineers have a role to play in ensuring fires are extinguished and prevented at an early stage.

“This is connected to forest and land fires and various development problems that have disastrous effects on people’s lives. I said earlier that in medicine there is malpractice, which is then discussed by an ethics council, followed by sanctions,” he said at the 44th Conference of the ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations (CAFEO 44) in Bandung on Tuesday (20 October 2026).

The governor, commonly known as KDM, said one cause of forest and land fires was poor planning. He therefore called for engineers whose work contributed to planning errors linked to fires to be publicly identified.

“When problems result from poor planning or faulty engineering in management, it should be openly stated who was responsible. For example, in a forest or land fire, which company was involved? Who was the engineer working for that company whose actions caused the fire, or who failed to respond quickly when the first spark appeared? Their name should be stated,” he said.

The ethics council of the Indonesian Engineers Association (PII) could then decide on penalties ranging from light to severe sanctions. The former Purwakarta regent cited blacklisting as an example, which would prevent an engineer from working in Indonesia’s real-economy sectors.

“I said earlier that engineers can be a double-edged sword. In engineers’ hands, justice, accelerated development and distribution to the public can be achieved. But engineers can also be used to impose hegemony,” he said.