Jakarta, July 24 -- Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, Budi Gunawan, has highlighted six steps for resolving the problem of forest and land fires in Riau province.

"The first is ensuring forest and land fires are extinguished quickly to prevent the smoke from spreading widely, especially to neighboring countries," he said during a coordination meeting on controlling forest and land fires in Riau, which was held in a hybrid online-offline format, on Wednesday.

To this end, he urged the forest and land fire task force under his coordination to deploy personnel and equipment to handle hotspots.

Second, he directed the Ministry of Forestry to deploy technical teams to restore land affected by the fires.

Furthermore,...