Stop burning land or have licenses revoked: Minister

JAKARTA (JP): Ad interim Minister of Agriculture, Soni Harsono, has warned plantation companies to stop slash-and-burn practices or have their licenses revoked.

Soni said Wednesday that many plantation companies in Sumatra and Kalimantan were using fire to clear land, causing haze problems as far as neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

"The ministry will immediately revoke their permits if they continue to burn land," said Soni, State Minister for Agrarian Affairs who is temporarily replacing Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah, who is in the United States on an official visit.

The Minister of Forestry Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo earlier this week named 175 plantation companies found guilty of using slash-and-burn methods.

Djamaluddin said he had given the 175 firms a 15-day ultimatum to stop using fire to clear land or have their licenses revoked.

The 175 companies include 133 (75.5 percent) plantation companies, 28 (16 percent) estates and 15 (8.5 percent) contractors opening up areas for the government's transmigration programs.

Soni, who is also chairman of the National Land Agency, said that if plantation licenses were revoked it would also terminate land use for business permits, which were issued by his agency.

Despite public criticism against the government for not doing enough to dispel the haze, Soni said the Ministry of Agriculture would improve cooperation with other related agencies to bring the fires under control.

Chairman of the Association of Agriculture Experts (Perhepi), H.S Dillon, lamented that some state-owned plantation firms used slash-and-burn methods to clear land.

Dillon suggested the government punish the state plantation firms and impose a hefty fine on private companies.

The forest fires have engulfed about 300,000 hectares of land in Sumatra and Kalimantan this year. The fires are the worst to affect the country since 1982, when flames destroyed up to two- million hectares of forest in East Kalimantan. (08)