REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MEDAN -- Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar has asked thousands of refugees of Mount Sinabung's eruption to preserve protected forests around their new settlement in Siosar village, North Sumatra Province.

"The minister conveyed the message while visiting the protected forest. A part of the forest will be turned into an access road to the resettlement site," North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho said here Thursday night (6/11).

The 6.5 kilometer-long access road passes through the protected and industrial forests in Siosar Village, Merek Subdistrict of Karo District, he added.

Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar instructed the Environment and Forestry Ministry's officials in North Sumatra to carry out tight supervision and ensure that the land inside the protected and industrial forests is not misused, he noted.

About 11 hectares of the protected forest area will be used for building an access road to the Mount Sinabung refugees' resettlement site, he remarked, adding that the access road construction would cost Rp11.5 billion.

The new road would enable the refugees to get to Siosar Village within 15 minutes while the 12-kilometer-long road that existed before the eruption took them an hour, he pointed out.

Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho said he had asked Acting Chief of Karo District Terkelin Tarigan to submit a progress report about the access road construction to him.

According to Nugroho, Mount Sinabung's repeated eruption has forced the resettlement of 1,700 households, with 30 hectares allocated for houses and 450 hectares for farming.

"The new settlement area is located approximately seven kilometers away from Kabanjahe city, the capital of Karo District," he observed.

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