Prabowo to Review Karhutla Response in Limited Meeting Monday Afternoon

Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, Dudung Abdurachman, said a limited cabinet meeting on forest and land fires (karhutla) would be held on Monday at 16:30 local time. He made the remarks in Jakarta at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, telling reporters that President Prabowo Subianto is paying close attention to the issue. Dudung also serves as chair of the steering desk for karhutla coordination.

Dudung said coordination meetings have already been held in several areas and that enforcement action against individuals accused of deliberately starting fires is under way, carried out by a joint task force. He described the response as serious, involving the Indonesian military (TNI), the police (Polri), other agencies and local communities. The government, he said, is treating the situation in Kalimantan and Sumatra as a priority, and each stage of the response is due to be reviewed.

The evaluation comes as satellite monitoring shows widespread hotspots. According to BMKG imagery taken Monday at 08:00 Western Indonesian Time, large numbers of fire hotspots were detected across Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua. Winds generally blowing from the east-southeast toward the northwest and north have pushed haze over a broad area.

BMKG data place haze across West Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, the Riau Islands, Bengkulu, Bangka Belitung, South Sumatra, North, Central, South, East and North Kalimantan, Maluku, North Maluku, and the Papuan provinces including Southwest Papua, West Papua, Central Papua, Papua Mountains and South Papua. Haze has also crossed national borders, with smoke from Sumatra reaching Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, from Kalimantan reaching Sabah, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and from Papua New Guinea drifting into South Papua.

The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre reported on Monday morning that moderate to dense transboundary haze is affecting central and southern Sumatra, parts of Kalimantan, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines. Air quality monitoring stations in those areas, particularly in Kalimantan, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and central and southern Sumatra, recorded levels ranging from unhealthy to hazardous. Liputan6 has separately reported that fires have burned 107,000 hectares of forest and land in Indonesia.