November 6, 2025 | 04:16 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A bundle of documents arrived on Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia's desk on Friday, October 24, 2025. The sender was Ansar Ahmad, the Governor of Riau Islands and a Golkar Party politician. In the letter, Ansar sought Bahlil's policy support as pressure mounted from the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries since August to revoke hundreds of mining permits on the province's small islands.
"We proposed that this be reconsidered because the region depends on those mines," Ansar told Tempo in Tanjungpinang on Tuesday, October 28. According to the two-term governor, the regional government opposed the revocation because the province's income relies heavily on mining and dredging activities.
Still, Ansar claimed that his administration had complied with regulations banning mining on very small islands, referring to those measuring less than 10,000 hectares in size. In fact, he previously claimed to have revoked at least 34 mining business permits for sand, quartz, granite, fill soil, and bauxite across several regencies.
The proposal to revoke mining permits in Riau Islands began after a pollution incident off Citlim Island, Buluh Patah village, Karimun Regency, in June 2025. The contamination stemmed from long-running sand mining operations by several companies over the past two decades. Citlim Island measures just 2,200 hectares, far too small to allow such extraction.
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