Native oligarchs and unscrupulous security apparatuses from the police to the military continue to exploit natural resources with ease and impunity.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMuhammad Beni Saputra<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t05 January, 2021\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t <\/em><\/p>\n The coal curse affecting Sumatra\u2019s residents is a matter of unhealthy politics. The coal sector is strongly linked <\/a>to national and regional oligarchs, and coal businesses often play a role as financiers<\/a> for political candidates. This clientelism has helped boost concession permits in the coal business, from just 750 in 2001 to 10.900 at present. The Ministry for Energy and Mineral Resources declared over 1000 of these \u00a0President Joko Widodo revoked 2,078<\/a> mineral and coal mining business permits. The clientelist nature is also weakening local governments\u2019 bargaining power vis-\u00e0-vis coal mine bosses. Far from punishing companies for their misconduct, invitations to discuss pay rises for their underpaid truck drivers and road construction workers are repeatedly ignored<\/a>. The same story applies to environmental crime<\/a> perpetrated by coal mining companies, which occur with ease under a clientelist relationship between local leaders and coal oligarchs.<\/p>\n The revised Minerba Law No. 3 of 2020 combined with the controversial, conditionally unconstitutional Omnibus Law<\/a> will make matters worse for Sumatra’s residents and business more profitable with less accountability for coal mining oligarchs. The revised Minerba Law<\/a> guarantees a contract extension to mining companies, even if they are proven not to exercise their responsibility to safeguard the environment. The law also recentralises mining industries, paving the way for national oligarchs to flex their muscles in the mining business as they did in the Suharto years. Locals opposing or even \u201cbothering\u201d mining activities in their regions they can be convicted or fined under the law. As for the Omnibus Law, it guarantees a 0% of production levy to companies that can increase the added value of coal.<\/p>\n Despite the phase out and phase down debate over the use of coal at the COP26, the conference has at least set a fixed year for Indonesia to end its coal dependency. Yet, until 2056 coal will likely remain a curse rather than a blessing for many in Sumatra.<\/p>\n The post In Indonesia, Sumatra\u2019s coal brings more harm than good<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on New Mandala<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The coal sector is strongly linked to national and regional oligarchs, and coal businesses often play a role as financiers for political candidates.<\/p>\n The post In Indonesia, Sumatra\u2019s coal brings more harm than good<\/a> appeared first on New Mandala<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":722,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393,3522,207,2179,40983],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475095,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475093\/revisions\/475095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}