"I learned that many mining firms have concession areas of about 50-100 thousand hectares but do not abide by environmental regulations," Surna said after attending a seminar on the environment here on Saturday.
Proper is active in the rating of firms in terms of environmental management to put them in several color categories, namely black for the worst , red for the bad, green for the good and golden for the best firms.
According to Surna who is also a professor of business and management at the Bandung-based Institute of Technology (ITB), those problematic firms have caused troubles because they did not pay attention to the environment in their efforts to make profit.
He said large firms such as Newmont, Adaro and Freeport had relatively good environmental care ratings because bad ratings would affect their image.
The environment ministry has set set itself the target of evaluating the environmental management of 1,000 firms this year. This number increased from that a year earlier which stood at 690 companies.
In the 2009 Proper rating announced in 2010, two companies were awarded the golden rating, green 56 companies and 21 percent were black or red.(*)
(A014/HAJM/a014)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
