WNAM REPORT: The government’s Task Force for Accelerating Post-Disaster Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (PRR) has assured the public of ongoing efforts to restore farmlands damaged by floods that hit Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra last November.
Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said his team, as part of the task force, had conducted damage assessments and collected data on affected farmlands to enable immediate rehabilitation and help secure rice supplies in the regions.
In a statement issued in Jakarta on Saturday, he underscored the government’s commitment to restoring damaged rice fields while preventing land conversion to safeguard production capacity.
“The government’s focus is on protecting farmlands. We have held a meeting and agreed that there is no room for land conversion, as mandated by law. There should be no violations,” he said during a visit to a state-run rice warehouse in Karawang, West Java, on Thursday (April 23).
He added that the government is distributing high-quality seeds to farmers to allow immediate planting once conditions return to normal.
“The government will support all those affected in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. We take responsibility for restoring damaged rice fields,” Sulaiman said.
Based on official data as of April 24, the PRR Task Force had restored 2,045 hectares of flood-affected farmland across the three provinces, with a broader target of 42,702 hectares.
Earlier, Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian, who heads the task force, said the post-disaster farmland program goes beyond physical rehabilitation to include strengthening land legality through updated agrarian data.
Following a coordination meeting in Jakarta on April 6, he highlighted the importance of updating data to ensure farmers have legal certainty over their land after rehabilitation.
To support this effort, he called for collaboration between the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning and regional governments to “resolve land issues, clarify boundaries, and facilitate the recovery of lost land certificates”.
