Jakarta – Sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia will take over the management of land seized from 28 firms linked to floods and landslides in Sumatra, a spokesperson from the country's forestry task force told reporters on Tuesday.
President Prabowo Subianto revoked the business permits of the 28 companies last week for alleged environmental breaches that worsened the impact of the deadly floods in Sumatra late last year.
The handover of land is currently taking place, task force spokesperson Barita Simanjuntak said, adding that there will be a "comprehensive process" to minimize the impact of the permit removals, the task force said, including on workers and surrounding communities.
The affected companies are involved in various sectors, ranging from forestry, oil palm and cocoa as well as power generation and mining.
The area of the land taken over from the 28 plantation and forestry firms on the list was around 1 million hectares, the government has previously said.
Danantara did not immediately respond for comment.
Separately, an Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry official, Eniya Listiani Dewi, said that the ministry was not consulted before the President decided to revoke the permit of a China-backed hydroelectric power plant in Batangtoru, North Sumatra, after the floods.
The government said on Tuesday that it had revoked the permits of 28 firms accused of environmental breaches that worsened last year's deadly floods in Sumatra.
PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy (NSHE), which runs the Batangtoru hydropower facility, is among the 28 firms whose permits were revoked after the floods. The company is controlled by China's state-run SDIC Power Holdings Co. Ltd.
Eniya told reporters that she hadn't been informed why the permit for the plant had been canceled, or what kind of permit it was.
The hydropower project, worth over $1.6 billion, has long been on the radar of environmental activists, with many calling for it to be stopped because of the ecological destruction it has wrought on the biodiverse island.
The presidential office and NSHE did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The energy ministry is part of the forestry task force and must have been involved in the decision making process, Barita said.