29/12/05 KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia has warned it will name and shame Malaysian palm oil plantation companies based in Indonesia which contribute to the annual haze hazard by allowing open burning. 
 
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Peter Chin said the public exposure would be one of a range of penalties that companies using environmentally damaging methods risked being hit with.

"If they had control over their land and they are still not practising sustainable ways of managing their palm estates over there, then we will be able to take drastic actions against these people in terms of labelling them as being unsustainable," Chin told AFP in an interview late Monday.

"That is something that I don't think they would want to happen," he said, adding that he expected the move to be effective because some of the companies were publicly listed and could not afford the bad publicity.

Open burning in areas of Indonesia and Malaysia has been blamed for the choking haze that blankets the region during the dry season and has become an annual nuisance and health hazard.

Earlier this year, the haze hit areas in western Malaysia, sparking the declaration of a state of emergency in the worst-hit towns on its western coast.

Indonesian authorities have pointed the finger at Malaysian-owned plantations, but Chin said the companies had assured him they were not responsible and were using sustainable methods.

"I have been assured that they are practising what they are doing here in Malaysia. So that's why, I do not believe, at one stage, when Indonesia says our companies are burning."

Chin said he believed Indonesian smallholders or farmers located within the plantations and in surrounding areas were often responsible for the burning.

"We have been shown pictures by our companies that their surrounding land is burning. Why? Because the smallholders have to start planting," he said.

The minister said Malaysian companies operating in Indonesia, mostly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, had been told to adopt the same plantation methods used domestically, which he said avoided open burning to clear plantations.

But he said they could not be held responsible for the burning caused by Indonesian smallholders located nearby their own crops, and that this was an issue "for the Indonesian authorities to answer".

Chin said Malaysia was ready for further talks with Indonesia to resolve the situation, but that it was a difficult problem to solve because it was linked to rural poverty.

"If there is no poverty, if our standard of living, if our economy is as strong as the West, I can tell you, (why would) we want to do things like this? Causing haze to choke ourselves. Why would anyone want to do that?" he said.

"These are situations where people are desperate. How do you tell them not to burn?"