Teak forest

Teak forest

From Media Indonesia

A few weeks ago almost all media in Jakarta reported the that the Wangon community in Central Java attacked the Forest Supervision Office (Perhutani) located in the village. This attack was prompted by an earlier incident in which a special security guard was said to have mistakenly shot a villager suspected of poaching teakwood from the forest. It was not the first incident in the region, and similar cases have happened in other regions.

The clash was believed to be a consequence of the prevailing social gap between the Perhutani community and the poverty stricken villagers. Perhutani is the state-owned company responsible for managing teak forests in Java. Forest management has been conducted since the 18th century, and has brought huge profits to independent Indonesia.

The Wangon forest has produced millions of cubic meters of top quality teakwood. However, the villagers living adjacent to the forest are very poor and have little land to cultivate. Their source of livelihood is very limited.

Perhutani has established a program it calls the societal forest and village development scheme. It allows the villagers to collect the leaves and small branches from the teak trees and sell them at market. But even this scheme does not help the villagers improve their lives substantially, because they need to work from dawn to late afternoon to earn Rp 1,500. The workers paid by Perhutani earn no more than Rp 2,000 a day. Teakwood theft has been going on since colonial times, and has caused great losses to the government.

Given the situation, I appeal to Perhutani to raise the minimum pay for local laborers. The government should also provide a health center, schools and the other social infrastructure needed to improve the lives of the local community.

S. ABUHANIFAH

Bogor, West Java