Tb. Arie Rukmantara, Jakarta – Most Indonesians know little about the State Ministry for the Environment and about a fifth are unaware such an office even exists, a recent survey shows.

The poll announced Tuesday by the Jakarta-based Soegeng Suryadi Syndicate center for political studies shows many people here know nothing about the ministry or its campaigns to promote environmental awareness.

The "Public Perceptions of Environmental Management" poll randomly interviewed some 5,000 people in all of the nation's 33 provinces. Forty percent of people surveyed said they knew nothing about the ministry's work, while another 23 percent were unaware of the ministry's existence.

The survey, conducted from Jan. 9-19, also found 98 percent of the respondents could not identify Rachmat Nadi Witoelar Kartaadipoetra as the current State Minister for the Environment.

"With only 2 percent of the respondents able to identify him as minister, Rachmat should take more measures to promote environmental awareness," syndicate director Sukardi Rinakit said.

He said the poll used a simple random sampling method and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percent.

Although Rachmat's name appeared over 61,000 times on a Google search, meaning he was known internationally, the public unfamiliarity with the former ambassador to Russia was closely related to his office's poor performance, Sukardi said.

"Most of the people we interviewed wanted the government to promote green and clean cities. It's sad to find that the authorities empowered to manage the environment have failed to fulfill such a simple wish," he said.

The poll also found more than 67 percent of the people surveyed believed the government had done little to enforce environmental laws.

Green legal expert Mas Achmad Santosa said the survey's results were not unexpected in a nation that put economic interests over environmental ones. This showed when the government was unwilling to prosecute big foreign companies for their damage to the environment, he said.

Former environment minister Emil Salim said while he did not support politicians making decisions based on opinion polls, this recent survey showed Rachmat had his work cut out for him.

"(The poll) shows there is a gap between what is being said and what is being done," Emil told The Jakarta Post. He said Rachmat should do more to promote green issues in other ministries and to encourage the President to give public policies "environmental souls".