Palm oil plantation at Manokwari (Jasoil)
Jayapura, Jubi – Investors owning palm oil plantations are a threat to indigenous Papuans, said the chairman of Meepago Customary Council, Ruben Edowai.
The affiliate company of Goodhope Company owned by the transnational company of Srilanka origin Carson Cumberbatch, PT. Nabire Baru holds 32,000 hectares of land in Nabire Regency, while in Sirna Village, PT. Sariwana Adi Perkasa hold eight thousand hectares of concession area.
“In reality, the investors take a broader location to the west of Nabire,” Edowai told Jubi by phone on Sunday (9/11).
Currently, PT. Indo Primadona Perkasa is planning to open the palm oil plantation in the area located between Yaur and Teluk Umar sub-districts, following PT. Sawit Makmur Abadi and PT. Artha Nusa Agrindo who got a permit in 2014. Both companies owned 40,000 hectares and 19,377 hectares of plantation areas each in Nabire.
“All of this has damaged us and our nature. The investors and owners of palm oil plantations have destroyed the government’s regulation, morality, culture and religiousness,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive of Customary Administration of Nabire Region, S.P. Hane Bora said their lands, forests and people are nearly exhausted. Water resource and all creatures surrounded are gone when those investors came. According to him, the social injustice in Nabire is getting worst because the indigenous people whose have the land tenure rights are uneducated. “The local people there are not school graduated, so the investors used their weakness for their own profits,” said Hane Bora.
As the landowners, they refuse the companies who would threat the existence of the indigenous Papuans in Papua Land. (Ernest Pugiye/rom)
