Police told to act against smugglers
Nana Rukmana, The Jakarta Post, Cirebon
A leader in the House of Representatives has called on security personnel in Cirebon to clamp down timber smuggling in the waters off West Java.
"The smuggling costs the state billions of rupiah and has to be put to a halt. The police must step up surveillance in the area and arrest the timber smugglers," said Suryana, a member of House Commission IV on agriculture and forestry.
The waters off West Java are a favorite route for timber smugglers transporting logs through the ports of Sunda Kelapa in Jakarta and Cirebon in West Java.
Suryana, who is also a member of the House's illegal logging prevention task force, said the two ports were the main gateways for timber smugglers.
"Both ports are prone to timber smuggling from various timber producing areas, especially from Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua," said Suryana, a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and a former speaker of the Cirebon council.
Suryana said he regularly attempted to uncover timber smuggling cases at Cirebon Port when he was speaker of the Cirebon council.
However, he said, it was difficult to uncover cases because the smugglers operated in a tight-knit network involving corrupt government officials and law enforcement officers.
From the accounts during his tenure as speaker of the Cirebon council between 1999 and 2004, Suryana believes the state loss up to Rp 129.6 billion (US$14.5 million).
The calculation was based on findings by the investigative team from the Cirebon municipal council's Commission B on financial and economic matters in the 1998-2004 period. The team found that thousands of ships of various sizes had unloaded their shipments of illegal timber in Cirebon Port from 2001 to 2004, said Suryana.
He added that around 60 vessels had dropped anchor and unloaded their shipments of illegal timber each month in Cirebon.
"So, in three years time, there could be at least 2,160 ships, each with a capacity of about 500 cubic meters of illegal timber, unloading their contraband in Cirebon. This figure is certainly very large," he said on Monday.
"What surprised us was, the activities had been going on for a long time and there was an impression that law enforcers had been turning a blind eye to the practice," he asserted.
Earlier, a top police officer at the West Java Police denied the police were doing nothing to stop timber smuggling in the area. The police were working hard to arrest the timber smugglers, with the seizure of three ships carrying illegal logs from Kalimantan and Papua last month being the latest success, said Insp. Gen. Edi Darnadi, the chief of the West Java Police, last month.