The Ministry of Environment and Forestry has been aggressively pursuing perpetrators of forest fires. For the past several years, the Ministry has won dozens of lawsuits against companies with the concession to utilize forest land. But the Ministry doesn’t always win, and when they did, they had to put extra effort. The most recent example is the case against PT Agro Tumbuh Gemilang Abadi. The Company is accused of being responsible for the forest fire that broke in their concession in Jambi back in 2015. The Ministry initially filed a lawsuit in North Jakarta in 2017, but the district court stated they had no authority to examine the case. The Ministry then filed a similar lawsuit in Jambi in 2019. After nearly eight months of trial, finally, on April 13, 2020, the Ministry’s hard work paid off. The Jambi district court declared the Company guilty.
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