Police forest-fire investigation widens
Police forest-fire investigation widens
Abdul Khalik and P.C. Naommy, Jakarta
The police announced on Tuesday that they were seeking two more
suspects and investigating around 10 companies in connection with
forest fires that aggravated the haze shrouding parts of Sumatra
island and neighboring countries recently.
Director of the National Police specific crimes division Brig.
Gen. Suharto said, based on the interrogation of first suspect
AS, police were now looking for Nainggolan and Simatupang, who
were believed to have started forest fires.
"We hope we can arrest them soon. They can give information on
who else was involved in the forest fires besides AS," Suharto
said.
AS, director of a plantation company in Minas district, Riau,
was detained and taken to Jakarta recently by a team consisting
of officers from the National Police, the Office of the State
Ministry of the Environment and the prosecutor's office.
The team said that AS had ordered two men to clear hundreds of
hectares of land by burning the vegetation there.
Suharto explained police were investigating around 10
plantation companies allegedly involved in causing the fires in
several locations in Riau province.
He said that the organizations were mostly pulp companies,
which had cleared thousands of hectares of forest to plant trees
to produce pulp. He declined to mention the names of any of the
companies.
Head of the Riau Environmental Impact Management Agency
(BAPEDALDA) Khairul Zaenal said recently that land clearance
through burning had also occurred around other giant plantation
companies in the area, such as PT Multi Gambut Industri, PT Raja
Garuda Mas and PT Sari Lembah Subur.
"We are still investigating them. Soon, we shall announce the
results. We believe that more people are involved in the matter,"
said Suharto.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Forestry sent several officials on
Friday to Pekanbaru, Riau, to monitor the current situation in
the field. "It's still ongoing; we don't know the details yet,
but the situation in Riau is under control now," said Masyhud,
head of the Data Analysis Center of the ministry on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, ministry officials also visited locations
affected by fire in plantation areas in Perdana, South Pontianak,
and at transmigration areas in Rasau subdistrict, West Kalimantan
province.
As of July 5, the ministry had identified a total of 896
forests and plantation hot spots in West Kalimantan province,
with 321 of the hot spots in forested areas.
Masyhud said that the number could be higher since many of the
hot spots could not be captured by the National Oceanographic
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, due to cloud cover
and their small size.
According to Masyhud, the hot spots in the plantations in West
Kalimantan occupied less than 0.15 hectares, the minimum coverage
observable by the NOAA satellite.
"This is dangerous, because these kinds of hot spots are
scattered throughout the island but we cannot monitor them
because they are out of the satellite's reach," said Masyhud.
He added the governor of West Kalimantan had started a fire
prevention initiative to keep the fires from worsening.
The initiative, inaugurated on Tuesday, will focus on several
activities, such as hot spot monitoring, extinguishing fires and
a public awareness program on the dangers of the slash-and-burn
method.
Masyhud also lamented that the Ministry of Agriculture
appeared negligent, even though most fires occurred in plantation
areas.
"The ministry (of agriculture) hasn't taken any action to
control the occurrence of fires in the plantations; neither has
it allocated special funds for fire prevention," said Masyhud.