Marianne Kearney, Pekanbaru – Indonesian police, forestry employees and plantation companies are failing to fight the fires which have been burning on dozens of plantations over the last two weeks in the central Sumatran province of Riau.
Almost two hundred hotspots have been detected by satellite during this period. However, no Forestry Department fire fighters have been reported as controlling the fires and plantation owners also appear not to have tried to extinguish the blazes.
A special investigation team, consisting of forestry officials and police, have spent more than a week investigating the fires on one plantation but have not yet reported back to forestry headquarters in Pekanbaru. It is not known how many of the fires are still burning as many of them have been obscured by clouds and they are not showing up on satellite maps.
However, yesterday fires were discovered on at least four large plantations. At least 30 fires were seen from a helicopter survey on the palm-oil plantation of Jatim Jaya and at least 10 small fires were seen on the timber estate of Esa Indah, said Mr Amin Sudando, an official from Riau's Environmental Impact Agency. He said these fires did not appear to have been extinguished by the companies' fire services but an investigation team was being sent to check on them today.
On a visit to the timber estate of Arara Abadi, The Straits Times found a large fire that had been burning for a week. Villagers told The Straits Times that, although the fire had covered the area in a huge cloud of smoke several days ago, no company firefighters were controlling the blazes.
"No one fights the fires," said Mr Darus, whose village is situated in the middle of the timber estate. He challenged Arara Abadi's claims that it had 500 firefighters ready to fight any potential blazes.
Police and forestry officials claim they have neither the resources nor the correct information about the location of the fires. But experts from the satellite-monitoring centre in Palembang dispute their claims.
Mr Ivan Anderson from the Forest Fire Prevention and Control Centre said: "There's no shortage of information about detection of forest fires. "Bapedal, the state's environmental impact agency, and the Forestry Department have a considerable amount of information on where the fires are. It is the government systems and deciding who's responsible for the fires that is vague."
However, the local forestry office in northern Riau province, where at least 20 fires were detected last week, claimed not to know where they were. One official, who was in a town near dozens of detected hotspots, told The Straits Times that his duty was only to monitor security conditions for the timber companies and not to monitor fires. He declined to be named.
Officials with Riau's Environmental Impact Agency admit privately that they are very frustrated at the police's lack of willingness to investigate cases. One official said part of the problem was that the police often lacked funds.
Locating the fires, often a day's journey from the provincial capital of Pekanbaru and investigating who started them, can be expensive, he said. But another said that, even when the fires were located closer to police headquarters, the police were unwilling to investigate.