Jakarta, Oct 26 (Antara) - The Indonesian government is intensifying efforts to extinguish forest and land fires as haze, which so far covered some parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan, has reached Java and is shrouding three-quarters of Indonesia.
"The government has made various efforts and taken several steps to tackle the problem of forest and land fires as well as their impacts," Head of the Information Data Center and Public Relations of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) Sutopo Purwo Nugroho noted in Jakarta on Monday.
He earlier stated that the haze emanating from forest fires, which had hit the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, had affected Jakarta.
"Parts of Jakarta have been shrouded by thin haze originating from Sumatra and Kalimantan," he remarked.
Sutopo agreed that the current haze disaster had covered three-quarters of Indonesia as smoke from land and forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan had continued to spread.
"Now, more than three-quarters of Indonesia is covered by thin and thick haze," the BNPB official remarked on Sunday.
He said the image revealed by the Himawari satellite from the Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) indicated that more than three-quarters of Indonesia was covered by smog.
"Yogyakarta in Central Java, certain parts of East Java, Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi, North Maluku, and the northern part of Papua are the only regions not covered by haze," Sutopo pointed out.
The haze has also affected Banten in West Java, parts of East Java, Bali, and Nusa Tenggara, he added.
The government has set up emergency houses, called rumah singgah, in seriously affected areas, such as Central Kalimantan to accommodate the haze victims.
The victims will be provided shelter in emergency houses or regional government office buildings.
For the evacuation of haze victims, Sutopo remarked that the government had prepared Indonesian warships (KRIs) and ships from the state-owned shipping company Pelni.
"The Navy has deployed 11 KRIs, including an RS ship," Sutopo revealed.
He said that KRI Banda Aceh and KRI Teluk Jakarta had been dispatched to Banjarmasin, Central Kalimantan, while KRI Dr Suharso, a hospital ship, will also provide assistance to the haze victims in Banjarmasin.
Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said his side had readied several KRIs to evacuate the haze victims.
"We have prepared six KRIs belonging to the Indonesian Defense Forces. Two other ships belong to Pelni. If needed, these will be used to accommodate or serve as shelters for children and infants," he remarked after attending a limited cabinet meeting with President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) on Friday.
President Jokowi held a limited cabinet meeting to discuss forest fires and their impact and the efforts to handle them and assigned Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan as coordinator for handling the forest fires and haze in the country.
Luhut said the warships will be used as a temporary accommodation for the haze victims if refugee locations in their respective regions were deemed unfit for use.
He affirmed that although these steps offer limited space, the warships' capacity to accommodate the victims was still relatively adequate.
Over the past three months, at least 307,360 people in six provinces were forced to seek medical treatment for respiratory ailments and other diseases caused by smoke or haze from the fires. So far, six Indonesian provinces have been seriously hit by haze arising from forest and land fires.
The six affected provinces are South Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, West Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan. Forest, land, and plantation fires are an annual disaster in Indonesia following the onset of the drought.
The fires caused by the current drought have burnt down 1.8 million hectares of land and forest areas, most of which are peatland forests, Pandjaitan pointed out.
Pandjaitan, in his capacity as coordinator for handling the haze disaster, accompanied by Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa, Health Minister Nila F. Moeloek, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, and Education and Culture Minister Anies Baswedan, inspected the locations of forest and land fires in Pulang Pisau District, Central Kalimantan, on Saturday.
Before conducting on-field monitoring of the land and forest fire locations, the ministers held a coordination meeting with the Central Kalimantan Regional Leaders' Coordination Forum.
As haze had also reached Jakarta, though still detected in thin condition, House Commission VIII on social affairs urged the government to intensify its efforts and take swift action to handle the haze victims as the disaster had spread across the country.
According to Sutopo, satellite imagery indicated the presence of soft particles of thin haze some one to three thousand meters over Jakarta on Monday.
"The government should handle the haze victims in the affected regions. It should implement a policy to ascertain that all victims are provided assistance," Commission VIII Chairman Saleh Pertaonan Daulay emphasized on Sunday.
Daulay said he had visited several districts in the southern part of Tapanuli of North Sumatra, about 300 kilometers from Riau, 650 kilometers from Jambi, and 820 kilometers from South Sumatra, which were worst affected by the haze caused by forest and land fires.
"The forest fire-triggered haze should become the government's main priority as it has caused serious and extensive impacts, which continue to be experienced in Sumatra and Kalimantan," he added. ***4***(A014/INE/B003)EDITED BY INE
(T.A014/A/BESSR/Bustanuddin) 26-10-2015 19:31:3 |
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