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