500 fishermen to help cleanse Batam waters from spilled oil

At least 500 fishermen will be involved in the activities to cleanse around 60,000 square kilometers of Batam sea from oil spilled by the foundered Natuna Sea tanker to prevent the oil to spread to more areas.

Batam mayor H. Nazief Soesilo Dharma took the decision to involve local fishermen after a meeting with Samuel H. Norton, a director at Tanker Pacific Management Singapore Ltd that operates the Natuna Sea tanker, in the former's office on Tuesday afternoon.

Nazief said that the proposal to involve the fishermen in the oil cleansing activities came from Norton and Nazief just approved the proposal.

Nevertheless, Nazief warned that the involvement of local fishermen would be voluntarily, and not a mandatory one.

According to Nazief, fishermen willing to help the oil cleansing would be paid RP 40,000 per person per day - or twice the normal labor wage in Batam.

The head of the Belakang Padang subdistrict, Jon Syafrindow, said that he had asked the helps from around 200 fishermen in his area, and all of them had agreed to participate. He added that more fishermen would likely be participating in activities to save their own environment.

Earlier, Nazief said that Tanker Pacific Management had agreed to pay billions of rupiah in compensation to local fishermen who could not go fishing because of the oil spill.

Nevertheless, Tanker Pacific demanded an accurate data on the damage the oil spill had caused to fishermen and the environment.

Jon Syafrindow had given his calculation of around Rp 3 billion to compensate the losses suffered by fishermen. But the data was rejected by Tanker Pacific because it lacked details. Tanker Pacifid wanted local administrations to give all the details, and it wanted to distribute the compensation directly to the fishermen so that there would be no more new demands for compensation from those who had not got the money.

Jon, however, said that it would be difficult to get into details, because the spilled oil had spread to three other subdistricts, namely Bulang, Lubuk Baja and Batu Ampar. Meanwhile, data on the losses in the three subdistricts had not been identified.

Mayor Nazief assured that the compensation payment would not be inhibited by lacks of details because Tanker Pacific had expressed its willingness to provide funds without waiting for its insurance companies to pay the compensation. (*)