Jakarta: Lack of funds has seriously hampered Indonesia’s efforts to put out illegal cropland fires which has sent the choking haze to other parts of South-East Asia in the past several days, local media reports said yesterday. 

“We have ran out of the operational funds. Without funds, it’s impossible for us to combat the fires. We need to buy fuel for extinguisher tools, as well as for transportation,” Agung Catur, head of the fire-fighting task force in central Kalimantan province, told the state-run Antara news agency.
 
Local authorities in south Sumatra province claimed that fires raging on peat land have been difficult to extinguish because the blaze’s sources were located in three metres underground. 

Governor of South Sumatra, Syahrial Oesman, admitted defeat and hoped for rainfall to douse illegal forest fires that caused the acrid haze blanketing large areas of the region. 

“Only the rain can put out the fires. So, let us pray and hope to Allah for an immediate rain,” Oesman was quoted as saying by an Indonesian daily Media Indonesia. 

Fires burning in Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of Borneo island, and Sumatra, also forced local authorities to shut down schools, and were blamed partly for land, river and aircraft accidents. 

Thick haze blanketed over Sumatra island has forced Merpati Airline - an airliner affiliated to the national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia - to halt its flights from North Sumatra’s provincial capital of Medan to Pekanbaru, the provincial capital of Riau in eastern Sumatra. 

“Merpati has told the airport that it will not serving flights to Pekanbaru until October 11,” Fajri Umar, an officer on duty at Pekanbaru’s Sultan Syarif Kasim International Airport, was quoted by Antara news agency as saying. 

Umar did not say the reason of Merpati to halt the flight, but he did not deny thick haze above the airport behind the decision, explaining that the airport were usually covered by haze in the morning, shortening visibility up to 400m during the past few weeks. 

A number of other airlines from various directions also rescheduled their flights from and to Pekanbaru airport. 

The year’s worsening haze has rekindled memories of a choking cloud of smoke that blanketed vast areas of South-East Asia in 1997-1998, sickening thousands of people in Indonesia. 

Indonesia banned the practice of open-field burning in 1999. Anyone found guilty of breaching the 1999 law banning the use of fire to clear land faces a maximum sentence of up to 10-years imprisonment and a $1.06mn fine.–dpa