Nearsighted govt

On Nov. 2, 2003, a flash flood hit a North Sumatran popular resort town near Langkat, killing over 100 people and leaving hundreds of others missing and feared dead. This should have awakened government officials and the public about the importance of improving forest management and stopping illegal logging.

It is widely known that businessmen in Medan who engage in timber export have recruited poachers to cut down select timbers. This practice has been going on for years under the protection of certain security apparatuses. Syamsul Arifin, the regent of Langkat, has tried time and again to stop this, but to no avail (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 4).

Another illegally exported product is sand, which has been exported to Singapore for land reclamation projects. Several small islands around Batam that have been mined for years are now missing or sinking as a result, which negatively impacts the lives of fishermen in the area.

A few days ago, Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Rokhmin Dahuri said the government would soon reopen the sand export business -- this time, to Malaysia. Malaysia knows that mining sand would mean destroying its marine environment, so this country would prefer importing it from Indonesia. But House of Representatives Commission V member Suryadharma Ali said he was certain the sand would be re-exported to Singapore, as they were in dire need of sand for their reclamation projects, while Malaysia had no such project.

These issues clearly show that the government lacks vision and is short-sighted in choosing meager foreign revenue over the welfare of the people. The government, as is also widely known, only receives 20 percent of export revenues, while the rest goes to illegal exporters and their partners in crime.

M. RUSDI
Jakarta