BackSingapore urges Indonesia to name firms in worst smog since 1997
Singapore’s pollution index climbed to an unhealthy 170 at 2pm on Wednesday
Premium(Roslan Rahman/AFP)
Singapore/Kuala Lumpur: Singapore asked Indonesia to name the firms involved in forest burning on the island of Sumatra that has caused the worst smog in the city-state for 16 years.
Singapore’s pollution index climbed to an unhealthy 170 at 2pm on Wednesday, the country’s National Environment Agency or NEA said on its website. That’s the worst level since 1997 when the index reading hit 226, according to The Straits Times.
Singapore’s foreign affairs and law minister K. Shanmugam emphasized the urgency of the situation and the country’s commitment to help fight the fires during a telephone call with Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa on Tuesday, according to a statement by the government.
Minister Shanmugam and minister Marty agreed that bilateral and regional cooperation could be further strengthened to tackle the haze problem, the government said in the statement on Tuesday.
The Malay Peninsula has been plagued for decades by forest fires in Sumatra to the west and Kalimantan on Borneo island to the east. The current smog could hurt the city-state’s services industries such as tourism, according to Wai Ho Leong, an economist at Barclays Plc. in Singapore. The Gardens by the Bay, a park in the city-state’s centre, said on its website it will close some attractions if the pollution index is above 100.
‘Illegal burning’
Singapore’s minister for environment and water resources Vivian Balakrishnan also spoke with his counterpart minister Balthasar Kambuaya to share relevant information to improve monitoring of hot-spots and land clearing activities, the city- state’s government said.
The two ministers asked the Indonesian government to share the names of the errant companies involved in illegal burning, though primary responsibility to take legal and enforcement actions against these companies lies with Indonesia as they have clearly violated Indonesian laws within Indonesian jurisdiction, the Singapore government said.
Both minister Shanmugam and minister Balakrishnan referred to the claim by an Indonesian forestry ministry official in the media that Malaysian and Singapore palm oil companies that had invested in Indonesia may be responsible for starting the fires in Riau, according to the statement.
Natalegawa and Kambuaya offered their reassurances that Indonesia would address the haze problem, the Singapore government said.
Air pollution in parts of Malaysia’s Johor, Malacca and Selangor at 7am local time on Wednesday remained unhealthy, according to the country’s department of environment.
Palm firms
Palm oil companies with operations in Indonesia include Jakarta-listed PT Astra Agro Lestari, Singapore-listed Wilmar International and Malaysia’s Sime Darby Bhd, the world’s biggest listed palm oil producer. Firms contacted by Bloomberg said they did not burn land.
“All our replanting, we do zero burning—that has been the practice since the 80s," Franki Anthony Dass, executive vice-president at Sime Darby’s plantation unit, said by telephone on Wednesday. “All our operations worldwide, there is zero-burning. Anyone caught burning, we take very strict action on the people in charge."
Sime Darby has around 78,000ha planted in Sumatra, Dass said. The firm shreds old trees before doing replanting.
Wilmar said in an e-mail it also had a zero burning policy. Golden Agri-Resources Ltd contractors who clear land must comply with its zero burning policy, the company said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.
Cost of haze
Indonesia is the world’s biggest palm oil producer. Plantations have expanded rapidly in the past decade as demand grew for an oil used for cooking, soap and biscuits. The government on 13 May extended a policy of keeping virgin rain forest off-limits to the palm industry, though environmentalists say enforcement has been patchy.
Large tracts of peat lands, around the coastal city of Dumai facing Singapore have caught fire, leading to this week’s smog, according to The Straits Times, which cited Indonesian officials. Farmers are also burning plantations to clear land for the next sowing season, the report said.
The fires hit a peak in 1997, when haze cost the economies of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore an estimated $3.5 billion, based on figures published in a report by the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia showed. BLOOMBERG
Jasmine Ng and Kenneth Foo in Singapore and Michelle Yun in Hong Kong contributed to this story.
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