President Jokowi Asks to Simplify Procedures and Regulations Immediately

President Joko Widodo leads a Limited Meeting on Social Forestry at the Presidential Office, Jakarta (21/9)

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo led a Limited Meeting at the Presidential Office, in Jakarta, on Wednesday (21/9) on social forestry. In this meeting, the President reaffirmed that the current focus the Government’s work is to solve the main problems, such as poverty, disparity, and employment.

There were several things that were asked by the President in the previous meeting. One of them was asking ministries/institutions to concentrate on alleviating poverty in rural areas, including the villages around forest area.

“There are 25,163 villages inside and around forest area which 71 percent of them depend their lives on forest resources,” the President said in his introductory remarks.

In addition, there are 10.2 million underpivileged people inside forest area who do not have legal aspect on forest resources. Therefore, the President added, it needs concrete measures to overcome poverty problem in the villages inside and around forest area. One of them is by immediately realizing social forestry policy that gives space access to forest resources for the people living inside and around forest area.

“I see the realization of social forestry in the schemes of community forestry, villageforests, community plantation forests, and customary forests, is not optimally carried out,” the President said.

The President explained that 5.4 million hectares of community plantation forests is quite huge. However, until 2014, the realization of the area was only 13 percent or 700,200 hectares. In the meantime, the permits for community plantations forests issued by the regent was 188,000 hectares. The President also explained that the target for village forests and community forestry was 500,000 hectares, but the realization reached only 24.4 percent.

“I ask the Minister of Environment and Forestry to immediately simplify the regulations and procedures so that the people would be easy to access social forestry. Please give attention to customary community’s rights and immediately issue a stipulation of costumary forests that have met the requirements. Please bear in mind that the issue of customary forests is really important,” the President firmly said.

The President also reminded not to stop only on giving legal access by issuing social forestry. It should be followed by continued programs to improve the capacity of the people living around forest area. It can be started, according to the President, by preparing facilities for production, training, counseling, access to information of the market, access to technology, access to financing, and post-harvest preparation.

“Please prepare as well the management of social forestry’s business aspect that is not only agro-forestry, but to develop it to ecotourism business, agro-silvo-pastoral business, bioenergy business, business of non-wood forest products, and business of people’s wood industry,” the President said.

This Limited Meeting was attended by Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Wiranto, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Darmin Nasution, Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Puan Maharani, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung, Minister of State Secretary Pratikno, Minister of Environment and Forestry Siti Nurbaya, Minister of Social Affairs Khofifah Indar Parawansa, Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Rini Soemarno, Minister of Public Works and Public Housing Basuki Hadimoeljono, Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman, Minister of Agrarian and Spatial Planning/Head of National Land Agency Sofyan Djalil, Minister of Industry Airlangga Hartarto, Minister of Villages, Underdeveloped Regions, and Transmigration Eko Sandjojo, and Presidential Chief of Staff Teten Masduki. (FID/DND/OJI/EN)(MMB/YM/Naster)