VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Mahfud MD, has claimed that Indonesia has successfully minimized forest fires, with no massive fires reported in the country in the past few years.

The government has prepared some integrated measures to prevent land and forest fires, Mahfud said in Jakarta on Tuesday, after a limited meeting on the issue, led by President Joko Widodo.

"In the meeting, we have discussed the situation in 2020, as we are not only dealing with land and forest fires, but also COVID-19. Hence, we have prepared joint measures to anticipate the oncoming dry season," the minister informed.

"In the past few years, Alhamdulillah (thank God), we have managed to minimize forest fires, and we can say that no more massive fires have happened," he claimed.

"Protests from environmental activists as well as neighboring countries, during the past four-five years, were fewer,” he noted.

Efforts to prevent and mitigate forest fires, the minister said, would need firm law enforcement.

He reiterated that some measures have been prepared in anticipation of forest fires this year.

In 2019, forest fires scorched nearly 16,000 square kilometers of land, mostly on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan.

In 2015, the fires burned through 26,000 km of land, resulting in one of the worst haze episodes in the country’s history. (ANTARA)