East Kalimantan to stop issuing new permit on coal mining

East Kalimantan Governor, Awang Faroek Ishak has agreed to impose a temporary moratorium on new permit on coal mining as asked by Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

?We will stop issuing new permits on coal mining as there have been a lot of permits so far. Many of the coal mining operators have violated a number of regulations. We will evaluate the existing permits to assess on whether or not the miners have implemented regulations as stated in the contracts. Otherwise, we will enforce the law or we will postpone their permits,? Awang said as quoted by Kompas Daily.

He said that during the moratorium, the administration would evaluate all permits since East Kalimantan with its 14 regencies have the highest number of coal mining permits in the country.

Of the 14 regencies, the coal mining activities is only absent in Balikpapan.

Data from the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), there are 1,271 permits on small-scaled mining issued in the period of 2003-2009 in East Kalimantan with 33 permits of PKP2B with the total concession of 4.4 million hectares. (*)