'No punishment' for some fire lighters

'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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