SE Asian haze pollution problem

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Thick haze from land-clearing fires in Indonesia blanketed a large swath of the country’s west Monday, sending air quality levels plummeting there and in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, officials said.

The smoke shrouded an estimated 556,000 square kilometers of land on Indonesia’s islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, forcing many residents to wear protective masks, and delaying flights.

“The haze has persisted for a whole week,” said Frans Tandipau, a senior official tasked with extinguishing forest fires on Sumatra, as quoted by The Associated Press.

Fires from land-clearing activities in Sumatra and Kalimantan, and to a lesser extent Malaysia, have occurred almost every dry season since the late 1990s. They are typically set by people looking for a cheap way to clear brush for plantations.

Indonesia’s annual burn-off causes a haze that typically smothers parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia itself.

The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire, but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

In Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, many people were wearing face masks, residents there said. Flights in and out of airports were delayed early Monday when the haze was at its worse.

Air quality levels had reached “dangerous” levels, from “unhealthy” last week, according to a monitoring station in Palangkaraya, state news agency Antara reported.

In West Kalimantan, hundreds of “hot spots”, or satellite readings indicating possible forest fires, appeared in a number of regencies.

At least 640 hot spots were detected through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric satellite Sunday in eight of the 12 regencies in the province.

Haze has blanketed Palembang, South Sumatra, and its surrounding areas over the last few days, especially during the day.

Local residents hoped the haze would ease so that they could resume their daily activities.

In Singapore, the air quality dropped to “moderate” Monday from “good” Sunday due to the fires in Indonesia, the National Environment Agency said. Residents complained the air was “hazy.”

“The smoke haze has also obscured the sunlight and lowered the temperature and visibility,” the agency said as reported by Agence France-Presse.

“The latest satellite picture showed that there are 97 hot spots and dense smoke haze in Sumatra, mainly in Jambi and South Sumatra. The current dry weather conditions in southern parts of Sumatra are expected to persist until mid-October,” the agency reported.

Haze began to affect Singapore on Sunday afternoon.

The air quality also deteriorated Sunday along coastal areas of Malaysia’s side of Borneo island, mainly because of open burning in Indonesia, officials in Malaysia said.