At least 2,000 small islands across archipelagic Indonesia may disappear sooner or later as a consequence of excessive mining and other environment-damaging activities, ANTARA quoted Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi as saying. "Uncontrolled mining activities continue to threaten the existence of those small islands but I wonder why nobody, including the hundreds of state and private institutes of higher leaning in the country, speaks up and does something to stop those activities," Numberi said. The minister made the statement after delivering a scientific speech before hundreds of students at a graduation ceremony at Malang`s Muhammadiyah University. Numberi said more than 24 small islands in the country had already disappeared so far and eight of them used to be part of the Seribu (Thousand) Islands in the Jakarta Bay. Most of the islands that had vanished were uninhabited. He said to ensure the legitimacy of Indonesia's ownership over the scattered islands, his ministry had conducted expeditions to inventorize them, and was registering them with the United Nations in phases. So far, his ministry had registered a total of 4,000 islands with the United Nations and would do the same on 6,000 more in the near future. Numberi said there were 17,504 major and smaller islands in Indonesia. If there was no effort to stop massive sand mining activities on many of the small ones, more than 2,000 of them would disappear sooner or later.
