By Bernadette Christina and Fransiska Nangoy
JAKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian task force has seized plots sprawling over hundreds of acres from miners PT Weda Bay Nickel and PT Tonia Mitra Sejahtera for lack of relevant forestry permits, officials said on Friday.
The move is part of a government crackdown on illegal exploitation of natural resources, with President Prabowo Subianto saying last month more than 1,000 such illegal mining operations had been identified.
PT Weda Bay Nickel has a proper mining permit, but lacks the forestry license needed to exploit the seized plot, mining ministry official Rilke Jeffri Huwae said on Friday.
The plot is 148 hectares (366 acres) in size, based on the task force findings in the concession that is part of designated forest area, he added.
“They have the mining permit, but they don’t have the borrow-to-use permit for the forest,” Rilke said.
Authorities are now carrying out a ground survey to assess the condition of the land, he said.
The mine, controlled by China’s Tsingshan Holding Group, France’s Eramet SA and Indonesia’s Aneka Tambang, spans 47,000 hectares (116,140 acres) on the Indonesian island of Halmahera.
Weda Bay is trying to seek clarification from the task force, said a company source who sought anonymity in the absence of authorisation to speak to media.
Images from a regional news channel showed authorities, some in military uniform, putting up a sign showing the area was now under government control.
The task force has also seized an area of 173 hectares (427 acres) managed by PT Tonia Mitra Sejahtera in Southeast Sulawesi, said Febrie Adriansyah, a senior prosecutor at the attorney general’s office.
Tonia’s mining permit covers nearly 5,900 hectares (14,580 acres), ministry data showed.
The task force has identified a total of 4.2 million hectares (10 million acres), managed by 51 companies, as lacking proper forestry permits, Febrie added.
(Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe, Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by David Stanway and Clarence Fernandez)
