Though heavy haze continues to blanket parts
of western Indonesia, the government said on Wednesday that things were under
control and it did not need help from other countries.
Singapore, which falls victim to Indonesia’s
annual haze problem, has offered to help put out forest fires. However, the
deputy minister for environmental damage control and climate change, Arif
Yuwono, said the government was capable of resolving the matter on its own.
Singapore Environment and Water Resources
Minister Vivian Balakrishan told Channel NewsAsia that her country had offered
to send aircraft to help Indonesia extinguish forest fires, which threaten to
cast a pall over the city-state’s glitzy Formula 1 night race next week.
“We have a team on standby to help with
putting out fires or even with cloud seeding, as well as technical assistance.
It depends on whether the Indonesians request or require our assistance,”
Balakrishan said.
Arif said his ministry had yet to receive any
formal offers, but no help needed.
“We don’t need any help [from foreign
countries] because we already have our own standard procedures for handling
disasters. The forest fires are now being handled by the BNPB [National
Disaster Mitigation Agency] through rain-making operations,” he said.
“We also hope that the fires will decrease
once the rainy season begins.”
Arif added that accepting help from foreign
countries was complicated because the president needed to declare a natural
disaster emergency and approve any aid from other countries.Sutopo Purwo
Nugroho, a spokesman for the BNPB, also said there was no threat.
“Indonesia still has many resources, so any
foreign help will be accepted only if we cannot control the situation ,” he
said.
The government this week began rain-making
operations focused on South Sumatra because the province will host the South
East Asia Games in November and because it has 971 designated hotspots.
“We have decided to focus on putting out fires
in the areas near the Games. We are creating buffer zones around the venues,”
Arif said.
He added that three CASA 212-200 aircraft were
being used to implement the month-long rainmaking initiative, which started on
Monday.
Sutopo also claimed that the impact of the
smoke was still localized and it had not reached other countries like fires in
1998 did. However, Malaysian state news agency Bernama reported that the
country’s Environment Minister Douglas Uggah Embas last week sent a letter to
his Indonesian counterpart about hundreds of suspected fires on Sumatra.
The letter was sent as air quality on Friday
dropped to a level deemed “unhealthy” in one area of Negeri Sembilan state,
south of Kuala Lumpur.
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