More fires, hot spots on Kalimantan

More fires, hot spots on Kalimantan

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Forest fires and hot spots were spreading at an alarming rate
across Indonesian Borneo, at a rate of over a hundred a day over
the last week, a senior official from the Office of the State
Ministry of Environment said on Sunday.

"The latest report on Saturday from our staff in West, Central
and East Kalimantan says that the hot spots have reached 400
while on Thursday and Friday hot spots were only 200 and 300
respectively," the Deputy Minister for Ecosystem Maintenance
Sudariyono told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He added that the quick spread of fires was caused by strong
winds in some areas, which pushed the fires to the east from West
Kalimantan to the forested areas of Central Kalimantan and East
Kalimantan.

Sudariyono said that local ministry officials together with
local plantation and forest agencies had been trying to stem the
spread of the fires.

"However, we have not been very successful because we don't
have enough personnel to cover such a wide area," he said.

He said his office had received reports that parts of West,
Central and East Kalimantan, were blanketed by smoky haze.

He added that the haze could be thicker because land-clearing
by setting forest fires continued.

"Luckily, the strong winds have pushed the fires and smoke to
the eastern part of the island. Which means that it should not
have affected neighboring countries, such as Malaysia and
Singapore," said Sudariyono.

In contrast, he said, the conditions on Sumatra had been
improving thanks to the recent rain there.

The haze reached dangerous levels in June when thick smoke
blanketed most of western Borneo, Sumatra, Singapore and
Malaysia. The worst haze occurred in 1997, and to a lesser extend
in 1998 when it enveloped parts of Southeast Asia for months,
causing serious health problems and traffic hazards.

Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia have each blamed each other
for the haze. Talks on the issue have come up in the meetings of
the Association of Southeast Asian countries but there has been
no significant improvement.

Vice President Hamzah Haz has said the haze problem "was to be
expected" given the involvement of Singapore and Malaysia in
illegal logging businesses. The two countries have repeatedly
denied that they buy illegal logs from Indonesia.

Last Sunday, Malaysian Natural Resources and Environment
Minister Datuk Adenan Satem said that he believed that there was
large-scale slash-and-burn farming on Sumatra and the Indonesian
parts of Borneo in contrast to a few fires in Sarawak, Malaysia
on the northern third of Borneo.

Sudariyono said the condition could worsen as the fires had
hit the peat moss areas in Central and East Kalimantan while
people in those areas continued to burn the forest to make way
for plantations.

"The fires in wet areas (like peat moss) will cause heavy
smoke. And it will make it much more difficult to extinguish
them, especially because the rain is not expected until late
September," he said.

To make the problem worse, Sudariyono said, several companies
had been involved in torching the forests for their plantations
as it was the cheapest way to clear land. He did not mention the
names of the companies.