Minister won't hesitate to jail governors

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Minister of Forestry M. Prakosa strongly criticized on Wednesday Kalimantan's governors for their rejection of a 17 percent reduction in the logging quota set by the central government, warning them of serious legal consequences.

"Their reasons for disregarding the lowered quota are baseless. We remain firm that we won't revise or annul this year's logging quota. They should follow the policy or face criminal prosecution," Prakosa announced to the public on Wednesday.

He said that the ministry would summon the governors or send officials to seek an explanation over their defiance and seeming disregard of the environment.

The ministry will also ask the police and prosecutors to investigate any violation of the quota policy and to press charges against all officials who defied it, he said.

Prakosa was infuriated with a joint agreement made by four governors of Kalimantan to reject the logging quota set by the central government on the basis that the decreased output would render thousands of people in their provinces jobless.

The four governors are Suwarna Abdul Fatah of East Kalimantan, Sjachriel Darham of South Kalimantan, Asmawi A. Gani of Central Kalimantan and Usman Dja'far of West Kalimantan.

The governors, accompanied by local businessmen, met in Balikpapan, the capital of East Kalimantan, to endorse the agreement on Monday.

Suwarna estimated that the quota would result in unemployment for around 80,000 people currently working in the sector because companies would have to lower their output capacity to abide by the policies.

He claimed that he was afraid the additional unemployment would undermine security by fomenting social unrest in East Kalimantan, especially around election time.

However, Prakosa doubted Suwarna's unemployment estimates.

He also said the central government considered the short-term cost negligible compared to the irreplaceable, long-term value of the tropical forests that the nation still had.

The minister said that if he failed to convince the governors to abide by the logging quota, and the police or prosecutors also failed to charge them, the ministry would begin targeting companies that were now operating in Kalimantan.

"The governors may be able to get away with this, but we have the authority to revoke the operating licenses of forestry firms or to ban the exports of their products. It should be enough to prevent them from violating the quota," said Prakosa.

He added that if the companies stuck with the governors' plan, the ministry would declare the firms illegal loggers, and they would all be investigated by the police.

The government has been aggressively trying to restructure the country's forestry-based sector, which had, for many years, enjoyed the privileges bestowed on them by the New Order regime in exploiting the forests all over the archipelago, in order to gain as much foreign-exchange earnings as possible.

As part of the restructuring policy, the government decided to gradually lower the country's logging quota of natural forests for the industry to 6.89 million cubic meters last year and 5.7 million cubic meters this year.

However, despite the central government's laudable efforts to save the country's forests, the regional governments, empowered in recent years by greater autonomy, have exploited more of the forest for their own profit, in some cases even more than the New Order rush to cut down as many trees as possible.