Over the last four years, Indonesia has managed to avoid a repeat of the haze crisis that last peaked in 2015, when massive forest fires throughout the archipelago nation — caused in large part by land clearing operations for palm oil plantations — blanketed much of Southeast Asia in acrid smoke. But as this year’s dry season approaches its peaks, large scale forest fires are once again breaking out and President Joko Widodo is demanding that military and police officials put a stop to them now, or else.
Today, at a national coordination meeting on the government’s response to the spreading of forest fires, the president reminded top officials of the comprehensive instructions he had given them back in 2015 to handle that year’s haze crisis. He then pointedly told the heads of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police to remove any officers from their ranks who failed to stop the spread of the blazes currently raging in parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan.
“Those who cannot cope with these orders will be fired if they cannot overcome these land and forest fires,” the president said today as quoted by Detik.
Another point the president emphasized to officials at the meeting was to not wait until fires grew large before battling them, advising them to instead extinguish any fires as soon as possible.
The president also mentioned in his remarks that he was going to Singapore and Malaysia this week but he was ashamed that he would have to deal with headlines from news outlets in the neighboring countries about a repeat of the haze problem coming from Indonesia.
Six Indonesia provinces have declared states of emergency over spreading forest fires which are expected to grow in intensity as dry season peaks this month. Those provinces include Sumatra’s Jambi, Riau and South Sumatra as well as West, South and Central Kalimantan.
The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said last week that there were 433 hot spots across Indonesia detected by satellites (by comparison, there were 750 hotspots in Sumatra alone during the height of the last haze crisis in 2015).
The government said last week that it had sent nearly 5,700 firefighting teams to fight the blazes and deployed 33 helicopters and two aircraft to seed clouds to induce rain.
