A peatswamp fire in Riau
More than half of palm oil mills in Riau may be linked to illegal
plantations, according the chairman of a parliamentary commission in the
Sumatran province.
Hazmi Setiadi told a hearing in September that 121 out of
225 companies with mills did not hold any legal rights to land to produce raw
materials.
“These 121 mills then don’t have plantations,” he
told a hearing with Commission III of the House of Representatives. “If
they’ve got a factory, but they don’t have a permit for a plantation, then
where do they get the fruit from?”
Hazmi alleged that the 121 companies had illegally cleared
forests, and were mostly located on the fringes of the ‘forest zone’. He
claimed that 2.2 million hectares of forests in Riau had been cleared illegally
to produce palm oil.
Hazmi linked illegal forest conversion to the land fires
that wrack Indonesia each year, and which are particularly bad in Riau. He
proposed that identifying illegal mills offered potential to crack down on the
problem.
The Vice Chairman of Commission III, Benny K Harman,
described the encroachment as “corporate crimes”.
Source: CNN
Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia)
