'No punishment' for some fire lighters
JAKARTA (JP): Concession holders who started land-clearing fires prior to the government's ban would not be punished, the military said yesterday.
Armed Forces (ABRI) spokesman Brig. Gen. A. Wahab Mokodongan said that only companies that had violated the ban would be dealt with.
The government recently accused 14 plantation and logging companies of continuing with slash-and-burn clearing despite President Soeharto's instruction earlier this month to halt these activities. It had previously named 173 companies as suspects in the lighting of forest fires across the country.
Wahab said Indonesia now needs equipment, not people, to combat the fires.
Malaysia has sent about 1,000 firefighters to help local firemen control the blazes.
Separately, Minister of Transmigration Siswono Yudohusodo urged yesterday Indonesian officials to stop trading accusations on who was most responsible for the fires. He said quarreling would not douse the flames.
Siswono briefed President Soeharto yesterday about the fires which have razed hundreds of houses earmarked for transmigrants in the one million-hectare peat land project in Central Kalimantan, and in Dairi, North Sumatra.
"It is very difficult to extinguish fires on peat land," he said.
Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja said fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan had destroyed at least 300,000 hectares.
Sarwono openly said it was big companies rather than small- scale farmers that were responsible for the fires to clear land for palm oil plantations or transmigration sites.
Big forestry concession holders would not accept the allegations.
Indonesian timber baron Mohammad "Bob" Hasan was quoted by AFP on Monday as saying: "Why should we burn the forests, we need the raw materials? It does not make sense."
Prayogo Pangestu, another timber baron, admitted that 800 hectares of his firm's land in South Sumatra and Kalimantan had been damaged by the fires but said the estimated damage would not be known until later this year.
Separately, Antara reported that thick smoke still haunted the country although rain had fallen in some provinces.
Regent of Limapuluh Kota in West Sumatra closed schools yesterday because the haze was too hazardous for students.
A British tourist, Sean Nolan, 31, reported from Bukit Tinggi, a resort town in Sumatra, that the situation had become much worse over the last couple of days.
"You can feel the smoke in your eyes and on the back of your throat. It is just a terrible grayness. It feels depressing and unhealthy here," Nolan told The Jakarta Post.
In Ambon, Maluku, haze continues to blanket the city and has paralyzed air transport since Sunday. Hundreds of people are stranded at Pattimura Airport.
The head of Pattimura Meteorology Station, Subari, said: "This is the dry season. The sun heats the soil and the sea, causing the moisture to evaporate. The vapor, combined with (fuel) emission and smoke, causes the haze."
Fire destroyed tens of hectares of protected forest and coarse grass on Sunday and Monday in Mt. Penanggungan, Mojokerto, in East Java.
Three big lakes in East Kalimantan -- Semayung, Melintang and Jempang -- have completely dried up.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in its latest report issued Monday, has called the recent fires in Indonesia a "planetary disaster."
"The Indonesia fires, in which an estimate 500,000 to 600,000 hectares of forests and plantations have been burned, epitomize the potential problems of global warming and highlight the urgency to combat climatic changes now and not later," Reuter quoted the report as saying. (prb/imn/binny buchori/24/jea)
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