18 Sep Singapore reiterates offer of assistance to Indonesia to fight forest fires
SIIA Chairman Simon Tay was quoted by Channel NewsAsia on the current transboundary haze. The article was published on 14 Sep 2015 and the full text is available on Channel NewsAsia.
Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Associate Professor Simon Tay said being a “tough cop” may not be the best approach for Singapore when tackling the transboundary haze issue. NEA on Sunday said it would conduct investigations into the situation.
“I think in any investigation of this nature, the temptation is to say you have to play a really tough cop,” said Mr Tay. “But while the Singapore Government could do that, it probably isn’t the best approach.
“In the end, many of the companies now – the bigger ones in Singapore – have actually put their maps online. They’ve taken steps, they have firefighting equipment that even the provisional officers don’t have. So I would hope, in a sense, that the first response must be cooperation.
“In many of these cases, the companies may claim whether it’s true or not, they didn’t start the fires, the fires came on their land. So I think the first step we can agree on is that, for whoever started these fires, are the companies able and willing to try and put these fires out? Then, and again we have to give them some room because the scale of these fires and the scale of the land won’t make it easy, even if they’re trying their best.”
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons