Sumatra, Lack of governance, Biodiversity loss, Pulp & paper, companies, illegal logging, logging license,
Pekanbaru (EoF News)—A member of parliament who tackles forestry sector urges the Ministry of Forestry to stop issuing any logging license in Riau and review permits granted to companies, the official House of Representatives website (dpr.go.id) reported Monday (1/10/2007).
Azwar Chesputra, the parliamentarian from Commission IV, told before a hearing with the Ministry of Forestry’s Secretary General, Bun Purnama, on Monday in Jakarta that the government should halt giving natural forest conversion licenses in the province due to some problems should be solved first.
”Please stop the licenses issued. Evaluate first the permits issued. Accomplish the boundary between forest allowed for HTI and community forest,” Azwar said.
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The parliamentarian added that the ministry was supposed to stop natural forest conversion into other land uses.
He suggested the Ministry to review the need for HTI license in the province as he suspected the pulpwood licenses could oversupply.
“I suspect now the licenses issued is exceeding the need,” the Riau representative MP told.
“In order to create balance, due to today the protected area in Riau such as Tesso Nilo has suffered the worst deforestation,” he added.
Meanwhile, parliamentarian Fachry Andi called on the Ministry to calculate thoroughly the pulp and wood capacity need. He called on the government not to estimate such a figure, but conduct a comprehensive calculation.
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