Indonesia investigating Singapore-owned company for forest fires; suspends 4 local firms

A Singapore-owned firm is under investigation for causing forest fires in Indonesia, where authorities have also ordered four Indonesian companies to suspend operations.
Channel NewsAsia 22 Sep 15;

JAKARTA: A Singapore-owned firm is under investigation for causing forest fires in Indonesia, an Indonesian environment ministry official said on Tuesday.

Thick smoke caused by forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan islands has blanketed the region in recent weeks, pushing pollution levels to unhealthy levels.

Over 200 plantation and forestry companies are being investigated, said Muhammad Yunus, director of criminal law at the environment ministry.

"That number can still go up," he said. Mr Yunus added a Singapore-owned company is among the companies being investigated, but did not elaborate.

INDONESIA ORDERS FOUR COMPANIES TO SUSPEND OPERATIONS

Indonesian authorities have taken action against four Indonesian companies in Sumatra whose lands were set ablaze resulting in smog.

PT Tempirai PAM Resources and PT Waringin Agro Jaya - oil palm plantation companies in South Sumatra - have had their permits revoked. They have been instructed to stop operations.

The other two companies are in Riau. The Environment and Forestry ministry suspended the operations of PT Hutani Solarestari and PT Riau Langgam Inti Hibrido - a logging company.

All four companies could face prosecution should the Indonesian authorities pursue criminal charges against them. So far 27 companies are being investigated for carrying out the slash and burn techniques in clearing their land, while 140 individuals are also being questioned.

Meanwhile rain has brought much respite to residents in Riau - one of the areas hardest hit by the haze. Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation agency said the air quality and visibility have improved along with the drastic drop in the number of hotspots. Some schools have began to re-open.

- CNA/Reuters/xq/rw

Government revokes permits of companies involved in forest fires
Antara 23 Sep 15;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Environment and Forestry Ministry has revoked the permits of three plantation companies proven guilty of setting fires to land and forest areas.

The three errant companies are PT Tempirai Palm Resources and PT Waringin Agro Jaya in South Sumatra province and PT Langgam Inti Hibrindo in Riau, Secretary General of the Environment and Forestry Ministry Bambang Hendroyono noted here on Tuesday.

In addition, the ministry has also revoked the permit of forest concession holder PT Hutani Sola Lestari in Riau province for being involved in forest fires.

"(The decision) to revoke the operational permits was reached during an overnight meeting to discuss the imposition of sanctions. The meeting was led by the environment and forestry minister," Hendroyono affirmed.

After their permits were revoked on Tuesday, the companies are banned from operating until the police have completed their criminal investigations, he remarked.

He claimed that the companies must return their allocated land areas, which caught fire, to the state within two months.

When questioned about the plantation areas that caught fire, he explained that the ministry will soon make an inventory of the land areas.

"We will restore the land as part of the governments responsibilities. Hopefully, next year, the land will not catch fire," he added.(*)

Indonesia starts legal action against companies linked to SE Asia haze
BERNADETTE CHRISTINA Reuters 22 Sep 15;

Indonesia has ordered four companies to suspend operations for allegedly causing forest fires that have sent thick smoke across a swathe of Southeast Asia, an environment ministry official said on Tuesday.

Indonesia has launched investigations against more than 200 companies as it scrambles to bring the fires on Sumatra and Kalimantan islands under control by the end of November, amid complaints from neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

Previous government efforts to halt the seasonal slash-and-burn practices have failed to tackle the problem due to a lack of policy coordination and legal wrangling that can take years to resolve.

"These suspensions will be in effect until the criminal proceedings undertaken by the police are finished," environment ministry secretary general Bambang Hendroyono said.

Three palm oil plantation companies have had their permits frozen and one forestry company has had its licence revoked, he added. All the companies were Indonesian-owned.

Plantation company PT Langgam Inti Hibrindo (LIH), which is owned by small listed firm PT Provident Agro, was among the companies to have its permit frozen, Bambang Hendroyono said.

Provident Agro said in an email to Reuters that LIH had not received any notice of its operational license being suspended or revoked.

Director of criminal law at the environment ministry, Muhammad Yunus, said a Singapore-owned company was also under investigation, but declined to elaborate.

President Joko Widodo has ordered thousands of security personnel backed by helicopters to help fight the fires, and has threatened to revoke land permits from companies found responsible.

Haze has blanketed the region in recent weeks, pushing pollution levels to record highs in Singapore, Malaysia and northern Indonesia.

An air pollution index in Singapore rose into "unhealthy" territory on Tuesday, according to a government website.

Underscoring the difficulties for the Indonesian government, the Supreme Court this month upheld for the first time a 366 billion rupiah ($25.26 million) fine against PT Kallista Alam for illegally burning peatland, a case that took three years to be resolved.

Green groups say that the Indonesian government needs to put in place a longer-term plan to tackle the annual burning, and that a greater proportion of budgeted funds should be spent on prevention.

($1 = 14,490.0000 rupiah)

(Additional reporting by Michael Taylor, Fergus Jensen, and Eveline Danubrata and Rujun Shen in SINGAPORE; Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Stephen Coates and Christopher Cushing)

Palm Oil Producers Deny Role in Forest Fires, Cite ‘Zero-Burn’ Policy
Jakarta Globe 22 Sep 15;

Jakarta. The head of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association, or Gapki, on Tuesday came out in support of the country’s palm oil producers against allegations of causing the haze choking several regions, saying producers stand to lose from deliberately lighting forest fires and abide by a “zero burning” policy.

"[Members of Gapki] have implemented sustainability principles," Joko Supriyono, head of Gapki, said as quoted by Antara. He added that buyers of palm oil products demanded eco-friendly practices in the production and supply chain.

Producers face heavy sanctions and risk having their permits revoked if found to be clearing land through fire, Joko said.

"It is impossible for companies that have invested trillions of rupiahs to take the risk of having their permits revoked just because they want to save the cost of land clearing," he said.

Joko cited data from Global Forest Watch, which found that between January and the end of August this year, fires in oil palm concessions stood at 16 percent of all land, as opposed to 65 percent of non-concession land.

Separately, the secretary general of the Environment and Forestry Ministry, Bambang Hendroyono, told Antara that the ministry had frozen the operating permits of three companies linked to forest fires.

Tempirai Palm Resources and Waringin Agro Jaya in South Sumatra and Langgam Inti Hibrindo in Riau will have their permits frozen. The ministry also froze the permit of Hutani Sola Lestari in Riau province, which held a logging concession permit.

Bambang said that as of Tuesday the companies could not proceed with their operations until the police had completed an investigation into the fires.

Indonesia is currently in a state of emergency as thick haze from forest fires blankets several provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan, stretching as far as Singapore and Malaysia and sending air pollution indexes to dangerous levels.


Govt revokes, suspends licenses of forest burners
Hans Nicholas Jong, The Jakarta Post 23 Sep 15;

The government has announced the revocation of permits for four firms whose concessions in Sumatra and Kalimantan have burned up recently, adding to the haze fire disaster that has engulfed the nation.

One of the firms, PT Hutani Sola Lestari (HSL), is alleged to have supplied timber to PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP), the country’s major pulp and paper producer. However, the pulp and paper giant has denied the allegation.

“RAPP has no connection whatsoever with HSL,” RAPP president director Tony Wenas said in a press statement on Tuesday.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) database, HSL is a subsidiary of Raja Garuda Emas, previously known as Raja Garuda Mas, a business group controlled by one of the country’s richest businessmen, Sukanto Tanoto. Sukanto also owns RAPP.

According to Environment and Forestry Ministry secretary-general Bambang Hendroyono, HSL obtained its concession for a 45,990-hectare plot of land in Riau in 1999. The permit was supposed to have been valid for 55 years, but it will now expire following the government’s recent decision to revoke the permit.

“After we revoke the permit, it means that all operations should be stopped and all financial obligations have to be carried out,” Bambang told a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Bambang said that the rights to manage the plot of land would be relegated to the government within 60 days.

Besides HSL, the government decided to suspend licenses for three palm oil companies; PT Tempirai Palm Resources and PT Waringin Agro Jaya, both in South Sumatra, and PT Langgam Inti Hibrindo in Riau.

“As of today, all operational activities of these companies are to be halted,” Bambang said, adding that the suspension would be effective until there were court verdicts on the cases.

The companies are also to be considered responsible for regenerating the burned land, with the ministry saying that it was currently taking samples from the burned land to estimate the environmental damage as well as the cost to repair it.

The four firms are the first few companies on a long list of 286 companies that the government is targeting for allegedly causing land and forest fires.

Of the 286 companies, 90 hold industrial forest permits and production concessions, 49 hold land-conversion permits and 147 hold land-use permits.

All together, they are responsible for burning of 191,993 hectares of land.

The decision to impose administrative sanctions before bringing the cases to court is something that is unprecedented. It is also a part of a grand plan set up by the central government to put an end to forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, areas that have struggled with worsening land and forest fires over the past 18 years.

Both the Association of Indonesian Forest Concessionaires (APHI) and the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (Gapki) have rejected the general notion that big companies are behind the rampant forest fires, arguing that they are actually victims of the widespread slash-and-burn land clearing practices that are common in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Slash-and-burn farming is a generations-old agricultural practice to clear land quickly through the cutting and burning of forests and woodlands to clear the areas for agricultural purposes.

“There’s no way we would burn [our own concessions] because we would suffer from losses due to the loss of plantation assets,” APHI executive director Purwadi Soeprihanto said on Tuesday.

Likewise, head of Gapki’s agrarian and spatial planning division, Eddy Martono, said that most of its members whose concessions had burned up were in fact victims.

“While it’s true that the fires occurred on the concessions, these concessions were not controlled completely by the companies. For example, we already obtained land-cultivation permits but in those areas, local people still lived there. So if we looked at the hotspots, the fires happened on our concessions but they were actually [the wrongdoing of] local people,” he told a press conference at Gapki offices on Tuesday. “Gapki members are actually victims from this disaster.”

Langgam Inti Pelindo, one of the companies whose permit is to be suspended, is a member of Gapki.

“From PT Langgam’s report to us, their concession caught fire from neighboring plantations,” Eddy said.