VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

COVID-19 Handling Acceleration Task Force Chief Doni Monardo. (ANTARA/Muhammad Zulfikar)

COVID-19 Handling Acceleration Task Force Chief Doni Monardo cautioned that heavy smoke from forest and land fires, especially peatlands, can adversely impact public health and augment the risk of people contracting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

"Heavy smoke can pose a health threat to the community, particularly those ailing from asthma or ARI (acute respiratory infection). The impact is dangerous for asthma patients when exposed to COVID-19," Monardo noted after a limited meeting at the Merdeka Palace, Jakarta, on Tuesday.

To this end, Monardo remarked that President Joko Widodo had called to take precautionary steps against the occurrence of forest and land fires (karhutla). He stressed the need for closer cooperation between all sections of the community in all regions to mitigate forest and land fires, particularly in fire-prone areas.

"There is a pressing need for hard work and cooperation from all components of the community in all regions that annually experience significant forest and land fires, especially in the peatland areas," he stated.

"We avoid the smoke, so that we can also safeguard ourselves from the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic," he noted.

While opening the limited meeting, President Joko Widodo had stated that large sections of Indonesia would experience the dry season in August 2020.

The head of state elaborated that nearly 17 percent of Indonesia's territory had experienced drought in April 2020, while 38 percent of other regions had reeled from it in May 2020, and 27 percent of the other regions in June 2020.

"Drought will occur in most regions in August. We still have a short preparation period of a month from now on," the president remarked.

The president called for efforts to arrange the management of peat ecosystems in a consistent manner. Peatland structuring is conducted by maintaining groundwater levels and constructing canal blocks, ponds, and drilled wells.

"We have already applied other wetting technologies, but it must be consistently done," the president stated. (ANTARA)

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)

The United Nations adopted June 21 as the International Day of Yoga on December 10, 2014. To commemorate the milestone, since then, a series of activities are being organised across the globe to celebrate Yoga, the ancient wisdom of holistic health and well-being. Millions of people participate in these activities which include world leaders, international celebrities, spiritual gurus, writers, artists and persons from every walk of life. This year, due to Covid-19 pandemic, organisation of such large-scale activities was not feasible. Accordingly, a series of activities were organised to commemorate the 6th International Day of Yoga (IDY) with the help of digital technology. Embassy of India in Jakarta in association with Indian Cultural Centres in Jakarta and Bali and its Consulates in Medan and Bali, organised an online Yoga Quiz Competition. 20 selected participants were given special certificates of appreciation among which three highly knowledgeable yoga enthusiasts were awarded special prizes. Ministry of AYUSH of India organised a global Yoga Blogging Competition in which several Indonesian nationals also participated. As a precursor to the main event on June 21^st, a video conference was held on June 12 wherein Ambassador Pradeep Kumar Rawat interacted with the Yoga practitioners across Indonesia. The conference was also attended by the Chairman, FORMI (Federation of Sports and Recreation Activity, Indonesia) and former Minister of Sports of Indonesia, Hayono Isman. Ambassador congratulated Yoga lovers of Indonesia on the establishment of Association of Yoga practitioners in Indonesia (PPYNI) terming it as an important milestone. (Release Embassy of India)

Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan. (ANTARA/HO-Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment/am)

Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan has been aggressively involved in efforts to manage the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector to advance the field, including through digitalization.

"Investments cover nearly all areas, but along with Mister Airlangga (Hartarto, the coordinating minister for economic affairs), we are sharing (tasks to advance the sector), and it is going well. The MSME sector should fall under Minister Airlangga's domain, but since the MSME comes in the Creative Economy Board, we agreed to bring the sector under my coordinating ministry," he explained during a work meeting with the House of Representatives' Budget Board in Jakarta, Monday.

Minister Pandjaitan expounded that the Creative Economy Board, currently a part of the Tourism Ministry, is one of the seven ministries and boards under his coordinating ministry.

Although contained within the tourism sector, creative economy is also showing rapid development on the MSME scale. To this end, the government is keen to boost development, in the hopes that it would grow further amid the pandemic.

"We have merely eight million online-based MSMEs, and we will boost (growth), so we can reach 10 million. In the first month, we already have an additional 500 thousand," he noted.

The Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs recorded a total of 64.1 million MSME businesspersons in Indonesia, as of the first semester of 2019.

From the total figure, 63.3 million, or 98.6 percent, are microbusinesses.

From the total number, only some 13 percent, or 8.3 million MSMEs have capitalized on digitalization to conduct their businesses. (ANTARA)