Jakarta, Ekuatorial \u2013 To accelerate on recent forest fires fighting mostly in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the police will be encouraged to take action \u2018beyond law enforcement\u2019, said a senior official on Friday (19\/9), in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
Seven police heads from provinces prone to land and forest fires, — Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, and East Kalimantan \u2013 gathered for one-day meeting with the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4), REDD+ Agency, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Forestry, and Ministry of Environment, to discuss on how to manage forest fires which have been ravaging the country for the past two months. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are invited because most of the hotspots located in their areas. So, we\u2019re hoping that with the police involvement in tackling these forest fires, we will be able to prevent it from wide spread,\u201d said Mas Achmad Santosa, head of the legal review and law enforcement working group at UKP4 at a press conference. <\/p>\n
The forest fires monitoring system run by REDD+ Agency, Santosa said, will be distributing data to the police which will appoint person-in-charge to handle the forest fires. <\/p>\n
These data include peatlands maps showing thickness and determining location of fires, concessions areas maps on forests, mining, and plantations. Also, logging ban maps to identify areas which have hotspots as a result of illegal land use changes activities. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe also heard about the experiences done by Riau police which had done \u2018beyond law enforcement\u2019 and trying to replicate them to other provinces,\u201d Santosa said. \u201cUsually the police would only handle cases or investigate, but Riau police has been active on putting fires too. We need man power to put out fires especially in early stages.\u201d
\nBesides the police, Ministry of Forestry\u2019 fire fighters squad, Manggala Agni, will be allowed putting out fires not only in forest areas but also non forest areas, such as plantations to speed up things. <\/p>\n
In addition, he said that the police will also be approaching local governments to be active in handling these forest fires. \u201cBecause, this is the local government\u2019s responsibility however some of them do not very responsive in handling these fires,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Suhardi Alius, chief of National Police\u2019s criminal investigation, said that they were still pursuing legal actions, either on individuals and corporate. \u201cWe have corporations are already being punished. We hope that it can be jurisprudence to go after corporations,\u201d said Alius. \u201cIf there are concessions suspected for illegal burning, we would be able to press legal charges [on them].\u201d<\/p>\n
He reported that in 265 individuals and one corporate have been sentenced by the court over illegal burning cases in 2014. <\/p>\n
By 2014, there were two companies have been punished by the court, one in Aceh and one in Riau, seven companies still in the court process, and three more companies are being investigated. Fidelis E. Satriastanti <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jakarta, Ekuatorial \u2013 To accelerate on recent forest fires fighting mostly in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the police will be encouraged to take action \u2018beyond law enforcement\u2019, said a senior official on Friday (19\/9), in Jakarta. Seven police heads from provinces prone to land and forest fires, — Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3907,4053,4003,4113],"tags":[],"partner":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-63600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-forests","category-kalimantan-en","category-sumatera-en"],"yoast_head":"\n