Plantation bill attracts sharp criticism from farmers, NGOs

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A controversial plantation bill has come under fire from non- governmental organizations (NGOs) and farmer associations, which say that if passed the bill would harm both the people and the environment.

The RACA Institute, in cooperation with a number of farmer organizations and NGOs in North Sumatra, the Working Group of National Independent Farmers and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, has published a book to campaign against the bill.

"We cannot accept the plantation bill," Ivan Valentina Ageng, a senior official at the RACA Institute, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Ivan said the bill would just benefit large-scale plantation firms. "The bill allows plantation companies to occupy land and convert forest areas into monoculture plantations without any limits, as long it is seen as not going against national interests."

The bill also allows plantation companies to take out concessions of up to 30 years.

"Plantation companies would not be land users but practically owners if they were given the right to use the land for 30 years," Ivan said.

He said another problem with the bill was that it encouraged farmer to share their land with plantation companies.

"The bill wants to kill off the low-income farmers," he said.

The bill also opens the possibility of monopolies, as it would allow plantation companies to run the business from the upstream to the downstream, he said.

Ivan said RACA opposed the bill because it encouraged the authorities to give concessions to plantation companies to convert forest areas into plantations, continuing the exploitation of the country's forests and farmers' dependence on capital owners.

"The bill is a threat to forests across the country," he said, pointing out that the bill did not require plantation owners to finance reforestation programs.

He said it would better for the government to review all of the regulations and laws related to agrarian and natural resources, rather than to create a new plantation law.

A number of NGOs and other organizations have actively campaigned against different bills that would give large companies a greater role in business.

The plantation bill and another bill on water resources were drafted by the House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, I Made Urip, a member of House Commission III for plantations, agriculture and fisheries said his commission would continue reading the bill despite the criticism of the NGOs.

"We are trying to regulate the plantation business and allow the fair participation of large and small private companies and state-owned enterprises," he said.

He said, for example, that the bill obliged large firms to allocate a small portion of their land to small-scale farmers.

Large companies will also have to implement community development programs to help local people run their own businesses, he said.

The legislator said the House would send the plantation bill to the government immediately so they could both begin deliberating the bill during the next session.