Indonesia has sent hundreds of fire fighters to battle blazes on Sumatra island which have enveloped Singapore and Malaysia in choking haze, officials said.
Many of the fires smouldering across Sumatra have been lit by small landholders to clear trees from areas of peatland in order to grow oil palm or other crops.
“We have been making efforts to contain the fires. It’s very difficult in the peatland areas,” Indonesian forestry minister Zulkilfi Hasan said.
Singapore foreign minister George Yeo phoned his Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa earlier today to formally raise the city state’s concerns about severe air pollution and offer its help to control the fires.
Mr Natalegawa “assured Minister Yeo that Indonesia would address the haze problem, adding that many Indonesians in Sumatra are also affected”, a Singapore foreign ministry statement said.
Air pollution in Singapore spiked to unhealthy levels on Thursday.
Indonesia’s forest fire chief Noor Hidayat says an extra 300 firefighters have been sent to the worst-affected area, Sumatra’s Riau province, which lies opposite Singapore across the Malacca Strait.
The fires peaked on Sunday when 351 hotspots were recorded on Sumatra, including 144 in Riau.
Only 51 fires were recorded across all of Sumatra on Thursday.
The haze hit its worst level in 1997 to 1998, costing the South-East Asian region an estimated $US9 billion.
