Transfer of mining authority will not be postponed to 2005

The Ministry of Home Affairs and Regional Autonomy confirms that the transfer of mining authority will be materialized this year, according to Law No. 22/1999 on Regional Autonomy, and will not be postponed to 2005.

"God Willing, everything will be ready by February," said the director general of local administration and regional autonomy at the Home Affairs Ministry, Sudarsono Hardjosukarto.

Sudarsono also denied news reports that his ministry withdrew draft presidential decree on the transfer of mining authority from the State Secretariat. "The draft is not withdrawn, but it is finalized here."

Earlier, Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro indicated that the transfer of mining authority to local administrations may be delayed three to four years.

But Sudarsono maintained that the draft decree on the transfer of mining authority would be sent to the State Secretariat soon, so that it would soon come into force.

When the presidential decree on the transfer of mining authority is ready, local administrations are required to produce supporting regulations to implement the decree. But the local administration regulations needed to be evaluated by the central government to ensure that they were in conformance with the decree to ensure legal certainty.

"So, the central government can declare a provincial administration regulation null if it is not accordance with the central government ruling," he said.

Likewise, the provincial administration could declare a district or mayoral administration regulation null if the regulation is against a provincial administration ruling.

Sudarsono said that the government would this week issue guidelines for governors to produce provincial administration ruling to implement regional autonomy. (*)