Stopping the Smog

Slow to act and even slower to learn from past mistakes, is the impression one gets of the government and efforts to manage the thick haze over parts of Indonesia and beyond. This is an annual recurrencecaused by forest firesthat has been happening for the past decade. Yet, faced with a particularly bad dry season which causes a denser haze than usual, the government now acts as if it was facing the problem for the very first time.

Smoking out of its way from thousands of hotspots in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the haze always goes out of control. In Pekanbaru last week, the pollutant standard index (PSI) reached 984, past acceptable limits and inching close to dangerous levels. Besides blinding visibility, the tiny particles in the haze can affect breathing and lead to acute lung infections. And haze travels far and wide, impacting on the air over neighboring countries of Malaysia and Singapore.