West Kalimantan Legislator Urges Extra Effort to Extinguish Forest Fires, Raises Budget Concerns
Member of Commission IV of the House of Representatives from the PKB faction, Daniel Johan, considers the government’s efforts to extinguish forest and land fires (karhutla) on Kalimantan Island to have been maximised. However, according to Daniel, extinguishing the fires requires extra work, adequate budget, and sufficient equipment.
“The government, both central and regional, has certainly made maximum efforts in deploying all personnel and resources in handling this. However, because there are so many fire hotspots and conditions are extremely dry, it is difficult to overcome the fires. Moreover, they occur at night, which is one of the causes of the difficulty and the very rapid spread,” Daniel told reporters on Sunday (23/8/2026).
Daniel assessed that the extinguishing efforts have not been maximised due to insufficient budget. Therefore, Daniel urged the government to be responsive in making decisions to determine the disaster status of the forest and land fires in Kalimantan.
“Although efforts have been made, the fires sweeping Kalimantan are very large, and it appears the government has not been maximised, mainly because the firefighting budget is insufficient. Therefore, the government must quickly make a decision to carry out extra efforts, one of which is to declare this fire disaster a national disaster,” he said.
The legislator from West Kalimantan (Kalbar) assessed that determining the disaster status would have a broad and significant impact on handling the forest and land fires in Kalimantan. This could encourage the deployment of capable equipment and sufficient budget.
“For what? So that all extinguishing efforts are carried out quickly, especially bringing in effective firefighting equipment, whether water bombing, using aircraft with liquid substances that help accelerate extinguishing, as well as other efforts to prepare personal protective equipment for field firefighters. The current condition is already extraordinary, the impact is very large, especially for public health because the air is already very dangerous for the community. Do not wait until it has caused many casualties before taking further action,” he added.
President Prabowo Subianto previously led a limited meeting on handling forest and land fires at the Air Task Force Post, Supadio Air Base, West Kalimantan. Prabowo emphasised that his visit was to see the real situation of the forest and land fire handling process.
“Well, thank you all. I came to see the actual local situation,” Prabowo said opening the meeting on Saturday (22/8).
Prabowo then asked regional officials to report on the latest situation in handling the forest and land fires. “Now I ask who can give me a presentation about the situation?” he said.
Expert Staff to the Head of BNPB, retired Brigadier General Asrianus Bulo, then provided a report. He stated that based on satellite data from the last 24 hours, there were 198 fire hotspots with a high confidence level.
“This means that with a high level of confidence, there are fire hotspots and smoke occurring in the West Kalimantan region,” said Asrianus Bulo.