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Source: Copyright 2002, Agence
France-Presse
Date: May 1, 2003
JAKARTA (AFP) - A Malaysian-owned plantation firm whose director was ordered
jailed for causing smoke haze on Indonesia's Sumatra island has agreed to pay
more than one million dollars in compensation, an official said.
"Following an agreement on April 23 with the company, PT Adei Plantation
agreed to pay 1.1 million dollars in settlement money to the government," said
Nixon Silalahi, an environment ministry official.
He said the government
would drop a civil lawsuit against the firm following the agreement. The money
would be used to finance reforestation programs.
Silalahi said the
company was earlier taken to court on criminal charges of allowing fires to burn
at its plantation in Riau province in 1999-2000, worsening the haze that
blanketed the region during the dry season.
PT Adei's president, a
Malaysian identified only as Goby, was originally ordered jailed for two years.
The Supreme Court cut the sentence to eight months plus a 100 million rupiah
(11,300 dollar) fine, Silalahi said.
Environmental officials found that
17 fires burning on Adei's land had engulfed 3,000 hectares (7,410 acres), the
Jakarta Post reported.
The government has outlawed the use of fire to
clear land for cultivation in an attempt to combat smoke haze but prosecutions
are rare.
The haze, an annual hazard for millions of Indonesians and
sometimes for their neighbours, is largely from such fires.
In 1997, and
to a lesser extent in 1998, choking haze from Indonesia blanketed parts of
Southeast Asia for months and caused serious health and transport problems.
The Center for International Forestry Research, in a recent report, said
11.7 million hectares (29 million acres) of Indonesian forest and other land
were destroyed by fire in those two years alone.
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12/5-
