RI said to lack capability in battle against hazardous waste

Indonesia lacks the intelligence capabilities to prevent the dumping of hazardous waste in the country, an environmental researcher says.

From 2004 to 2008, Indonesia's intelligence agencies managed to uncover just five cases involving the illegal importation of hazardous waste. These cases included hazardous waste and batteries from Singapore and used condoms from Germany.

"We have to admit that the abilities of our intelligence services are too weak to watch over Indonesia's large territorial waters," a senior researcher at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, Mas Achmad Santosa, said here Monday after a discussion on the handling of illegal transboundary hazardous waste.