Smoke starts chocking Jambi City (The Haze is back!)

As reported in The Jakarta Post on 30 June 2007, the smoke had started choking Kota Jambi.

Accordingly, NOAA's satellites showed 13 hotspots in forests and plantation areas in Jambi province. Secretary to the Forest Fire Monitoring Center at the Jambi Forest Agency, Frans Tandipau said that the 13 hotspots were located in a number of districts, in Tebo regency on 29.6.2007. He said that police officers and a number of officials from regental administration were heading to the locations of forest fires. With the dry season expected in July, it is anticipated that the farmers are preparing to clear their lands using the inexpensive slash-and-burn method. This will inevitably lead to forest fires and this is just the beginning. Haze situation will get worse once the fires spread to peat forests.

Jambi is among the worse province choked by haze from forest fires and peat fires in 2006. Others badly affected areas by these fires include Bengkulu province, and a number provinces in the Kalimantan Island. Eventually, the haze was blown across the Malacca Straits and spread to Singapore, Malaysia, Southern Thailand and Brunei Darussalam. It has become a transboundary problem of haze pollution within the Asean region for many years.

On 1 July The Star newspapers reported that slight haze was detected in northern areas of Malaysia. It has been confirmed by the Meteorological Services Department that the haze is back although it has not strongly affected visibility or air quality.

It was reported that the visibility at 2pm 30.6.2007 in Alor Star, Prai, Butterworth, Penang, Ipoh and Sitiawan was between 5km and 9km while it was more than 10km for the rest of the peninsula including the Klang Valley.

The Indonesian government promised that it would strengthen its effort to fight forest and peat fires in 2007. It has promised to reduce its hotspots by 50 per cent this year. Such commitment is a "big challenge" indeed. A haze masterplan that covers fire prevention and suppression, legislation and enforcement as well as regional and international collaboration is the obvious answer to the transboundary haze problem. Nevertheless, we are keeping our fingers crossed that recurrance of haze will be much under controlled and won't be as bad as last year.