Siswono ordered to resettle more squatters

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto has ordered Minister of Transmigration Siswono Yudhohusodo to resettle more forest squatters to improve their welfare.

After meeting the President at Merdeka Palace on Wednesday, Siswono said that 674,000 families were squatting in forests around the country and farming almost seven million hectares.

Their number would keep rising as long as farmers' land holdings continued to dwindle, he said.

"The number of squatters already resettled is nothing compared to their growth rate," he said.

The government has blamed deforestation on squatters, who practice slash-and-burn farming in the forests.

Siswono said the president had ordered him to coordinate the resettlement program with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Forestry.

Many people become forest squatters in search of pay for illegal logging.

Siswono said the number of forest squatters was increasing partly because of poor forest supervision.

He also talked to the president about the planned resettlement of farmers at a one million-hectare peat moss agricultural site in Central Kalimantan.

Siswono said 316,000 farming families would be dispatched there soon; 40 percent of them will finance their own resettlement. (06/aan)