Prabowo surprised as wildfire-hit areas shrink to 639 hectares
JAKARTA - President Prabowo Subianto said he was surprised when he received the latest report on efforts to tackle forest and land fires in six provinces.
The Head of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), Suharyanto, reported that 639.23 hectares of land were still actively burning across the six provinces. He presented the figures at a coordination meeting on forest and land fire management chaired by Prabowo and attended by several ministers, as well as senior Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) and National Police (Polri) officials, on Monday (12 October).
After hearing the figures, Prabowo asked the BNPB chief to confirm the latest data.
So, the total area across the six provinces that still needs to be extinguished, meaning it is still burning, is 639.23 hectares. Is that correct?
Suharyanto confirmed the figure. Prabowo had previously thought that fires across the six provinces still covered tens of thousands of hectares, as they had several weeks earlier.
It turns out the area has decreased considerably.
Call for coordinated government response
Prabowo urged all government agencies to work together to tackle forest and land fires in the six provinces.
If we do not intervene on a massive scale, we will not be able to deal with this.
According to the BNPB report, the six provinces prioritised for fire management are Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Jambi, West Kalimantan and Riau. Of the 639.23 hectares recorded, the largest area affected was in Tanjung Puting National Park, where fires covered 513.89 hectares.
Emergency measures and long-term prevention
As part of the response, Prabowo ordered 200 water pumps to be sent from Java. He also said he would allocate IDR 2 billion to drill 200 water wells, although he did not specify the source of the funding.
To prevent forest and land fires from recurring, Prabowo also stressed the need for long-term preventive measures, including increasing the number of personnel stationed in forest areas.
When I called for 70,000 forest rangers, there was a reason behind it. It was to protect our forests.
