As promised, here is further information about the illegal mining. A site I visited last week. The mining is not illegal since the government gets a cut when the person/company first starts to mine. The government is then also entitled to a cut on what they mine.
You saw the images from the pristine landscape of the rainforest. Well check these images which are further down the river.
They eat into the forest and destroy it
The workers earn 60,000 Rp which is approx $7 a day. Some came from palm oil plantations since these at the time were apparently not paying too much. Others were from other indonesian islands where they don’t give a damn whether this island and its animals habitants are destroyed. The children are not even provided with education. Everyday is simply a holiday for the children! So what about their future ? Lives simply go on and you can see if the children witness their father destroying the landscape, they will certainly have no scruples when they grow up. A vicious circle. You can say ‘google’ ‘blog’ ‘ facebook’ and these guys will not even have a hint of what you are own about. Back to the stoneage. The government should be doing something about this since they have taxes for everything. In Jakarta my room at the Sheraton was $91. By adding hotel tax, service tax, westerns tax, and everything psuedoism for tax the bill came to $156. So where there hell is this being spent ? I cannot really criticise since the UK are too great at their spending but still. Sad to see people not being pulled from the plug hole of poverty.
These people seriously have no ethics. The bottom line is, they need money to feed their family no matter what the environmental cost. But yet the government does not think of alternatives. There are so many islands and the government and control is based in Java, how can they control everything ? They rely on local ministers but like all third world countries, bribery works just fine. All about money eh!
What they do not realise is, what next after the mining is complete? The fat government and the fat businessman has made their money, whereas you have survived on a wage that only carries you day to day. They really do not see the bigger picture.
With my images and words(translated) they are going to be dropped some leaflets so that they can try to understand the consequences of their current actions for the future. Its perhaps easy for me or us to say don’t do it, you’re destroying the landscape etc.. but this place Borneo is like no other. Its a beautiful rainforest which Orangutans and Proboscis Monkeys are only native to. Once trees are chopped, they need min 25 years to grow (fully grown: 50-100 years depending on the tree) and the peat swampy forest is what is required.
Once destroyed there is no coming back. When will they wake up ?
Animals Do Have A Voice Blog 