Jakarta Globe – AFP, Sep 16, 2014
The Marina Bay Sands casino and resort is pictured on a hazy day in Singapore June 18, 2013. (Reuters Photo/Edgar Su) |
Jakarta.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to ratify a regional agreement on
cross-border haze as fires ripped through forests in west of the country,
choking neighboring Singapore with hazardous smog.
Officials
in Singapore and Malaysia have responded furiously to Indonesian forest fires,
which have intensified and become more frequent in recent years.
Singapore’s
air pollution rose to unhealthy levels on Monday as the Indonesian government
failed to control fires in Sumatra island’s vast tracts of tropical forest.
The
parliament’s decision has been passed into law.
The
agreement obliges the government to strengthen its policies on forest fires and
haze, actively participate in regional decision-making on the issue and
dedicate more resources to the problem, regionally and domestically.
Indonesia
signed the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution 12 years ago and has
been under increasing pressure to ratify the document, beginning deliberations
in earnest in January.
“Indonesia
has already carried out operations for the prevention, mitigation of forest
fires and haze, and recovery activities, at the national level,” the House said
in a statement.
“But, to
handle cross-border pollution, Indonesia and other ASEAN nations recognize that
prevention and mitigation need to be done together,” it said.
While
Singapore and Malaysia are smothered in haze from Indonesian forests every
year, fires in June last year caused the region’s worst pollution crisis in a
decade, renewing calls for action in the archipelago.
Authorities
have said most of the fires are deliberately lit to clear land for commercial
plantations, such as paper and palm oil, and have arrested people caught in the
act.
The June
2013 haze crisis sparked a diplomatic row with Indonesia claiming Malaysian and
Singaporean companies with plantations on Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo were
among those starting the fires.
Singapore
last month passed a bill that gives the government powers to fine companies
that cause or contribute to haze up to Sg$2 million ($1.6 million), regardless
of whether they have an office in Singapore.
Agence France-Presse
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