South Sumatra government launched “Million Prayer” program in collaboration with APP Sinar Mas on Saturday, April 10, 2021. It is offering prayers to avoid this year's forest and land fires disaster.
A total of 300 students from the Aulia Cendekia Islamic Boarding School, Talang Jambe, Palembang joined this program. They will send out prayer every day until October or until the dry season ends in South Sumatra.
The South Sumatra Governor, Herman Deru, said that the efforts to tackle forest and land fires should be accompanied by prayers to God Almighty. He also reminded that South Sumatra continues to increase awareness because it has at least 1.4 million hectares of peatland.
"In the past, people don’t care about forest and land fires but now they understand better due to the constant education to the people”
The program also hands out Friday sermons books to the community which contained educational information to prevent forest and land fires.
APP Sinar Mas director, Soewarso said that disaster management especially forest and land fires could not be done without stakeholders’ collaboration.
"We also invite other companies to be work together to prevent forest and land fires,"
The Regional Disaster Management Agency of South Sumatra Province records only 4,536 hotspots in 2020 decreased from 2019 with 17,361 hotspots with areas burned in 2020 was 946.33 hectares. To maximize the efforts to prevent forest and land fires, South Sumatra set emergency alert status for forest and land fires in March 2021 or earlier than last year.
