REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, PEKANBARU -- Police have arrested a farmer suspected of setting fire to forested land to prepare the fields for an oil palm plantation in Rokan Hilir district, Riau province.
"Police also seized a number of items from the farmer as evidence," chief of the Rokan district police Adj. Snr. Comr. Tonny Hermawan said on Saturday.
The evidence included several pieces of burned wood and a lighter.
The 31-year-old farmer, identified by his initials as SH, was arrested on the scene. He is believed to have set fire to four hectares of forested land.
The police made the arrest following a tip-off from local residents on Thursday (Feb 13) that four hectares of forested land had been burned.
The district police later sent its officers to the scene, where they found the farmer cutting and burning grass on the land.
When the police officers arrived at the scene, the fire had spread to a woodland near the farmer's land, officials said.
"It is strongly believed that he intentionally burned the land to expand his oil palm plantation," Adj. Snr. Comr. Tonny Hermawan said.
The farmer is undergoing intensive questioning.
The number of hotspots caused by forest and plantation fires in Riau Province have significantly increased from 81 on Wednesday, to 278 on Thursday morning.
The Terra and Aqua satellite detected the hotspots on Thursday, at 5 a.m. local time, Ahmad Agus Widodo, an analyst from the Pekanbaru meteorological, climatology and geophysics agency (BMG) stated on Thursday.
The 278 hotspots are spread across 11 districts and cities, with the largest number reported in the Bengkalis district.
Bengkalis had 60 hotspots, 59 were in Siak, 57 in Pelalawan, 41 in Meranti, 13 in Indragiri Hilir, 17 were in Rokan Hilir, 15 in Dumai, 7 each in Indragiri Hulu and Kampar, and one each in Kuantan Singingi and Rokan Hulu.
The lack of rainfall increased the number of hotspots in the province, he explained.
The fires produced haze that enveloped several cities and districts, particularly Dumai City and Siak, where the air quality index has dropped to a precarious level.
The Riau provincial administration has developed a haze disaster response after holding a coordinating meeting with various agencies, noted officials.
On June 21 last year, the Indonesian government declared a state of emergency in Riau after heavy smoke and haze blanketed parts of Sumatra Island, Singapore, and Malaysia.
Several flights were postponed or cancelled and the Sultan Syarif Kasim (SSK) II Airport in Pekanbaru, Riau Island, was temporarily shut down due to the haze on June 20, 2013.
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