Regents charged with selling forest concessions

JAKARTA (JP): The government will take to court four regents from East Kalimantan for allegedly selling forest concessions, a senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said on Tuesday.

Secretary-General of the ex-ministry of forestry and plantations Suripto said that one of the four regents have sold up to 370 concessions, each covering 100 hectares of forest land.

The concessions were sold at around Rp 10 million ($US1,200) to Rp 600 million depending on the type of forests, he said.

"It is more expensive for permits for virgin forests," Suripto said after opening a workshop on forestry here.

The four regents were not only charged with "commercializing" the permits but have also violated the law, he said.

According to him, the concessions issued by the four regents are not valid because they were issued after the government introduced a new forestry law late last year.

Although the government has yet to issue guidelines on the mechanism of the issuance of new forestry concessions, the government regulation No. 6/1999 which allowed regency administrations to issue forestry concessions on areas of up to 100 hectares were no longer valid with the implementation of the new law, he said.

Suripto, who will end his term in January next year following the merger of the ministry with the ministry of agriculture into the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, said that the issuance of the new forestry concessions had also encouraged the smuggling of heavy logging equipment from Malaysia.

At least 700 units of heavy logging equipment, with a capacity of felling 5,000 cubic meters of trees per month, had been illegally imported from the neighboring country.

He said that his office was currently coordinating with the Customs and Excise Office to find out what kind of import permit they use.

Workshop

The two-day workshop, organized by the Ministry of Plantations and Forestry in conjunction with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the European Union's Forest Liaison Bureau, is the last of a series of workshops held between August and October in accordance with Indonesia's commitment to the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI).

In the CGI meeting on Feb. 1 in Jakarta, Indonesia made a commitment to invite the cooperation and coordination of other ministries to impose strong measures against illegal loggers and the closure of illegal sawmills, to speed up forest resource assessment, and to evaluate the policy on natural forest conversions.

It also agreed to downsize and restructure wood-based industries, close heavily-indebted wood industries under the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA), synchronize reforestation programs with existing forest industries, recalculate the real value of timber, and use the decentralization process as a tool to enhance sustainable forest management.

Suripto said that failure to execute the eight commitments could affect the new loan commitment from the CGI.

The workshop on Tuesday was aimed to create a uniform perception of forestry among government officials and related institutions, as well as to form a plan of action for the sustainability of Indonesian forests, he said.

The results of the workshop would be presented in the upcoming CGI meeting on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, he said.

Suripto, who also heads the illegal logging sector of the Interdepartmental Committee on Forestry, said on his part he will report some preventative actions his team has done since February and what will be done in the future.

He said that in a week's time he would announce the names of more than 10 people allegedly involved with illegal logging, among them a businessman at a wood-based company in Central Java with the initials KLI.

Suripto said that illegal logging activities had been uncovered in Riau and Jambi in Sumatra, the Gunung Leuser National Park in Aceh, West Bali National Park in Bali, Bukit 30 National Park in Riau, Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan, and Kutai National Park in East Kalimantan.

Illegal logging activities had damaged some 1.6 million hectares of forest between February and August this year, and had caused the loss of Rp 1.2 billion (US$141,200) in annual taxes. (10)