Singapore, Malaysia in Sumatra anti-haze moves

Let's today talk peace in the region, instead of the usual venom over each other.

While most of us could only make our annual complaints about the haze, the Singapore and Malaysia governments had quietly gone to the ground in Sumatra over the years to try and help.
They went down to two Indonesian provinces - Riau and Jambi, the nearest to our two countries - to try and tackle the burning of the land.
Maps of the provinces in relation to Mal-Sing are here - Riau with Pekanbaru as capital, and Jambi with its capital also called Jambi.

But since this type of work is not sexy, the main news agencies and ang mor newspapers have not been writing about it.
The projects are part of Asean's plan to tackle the issue rather than just complain to the Indonesians.

There is of course a strong suspicion (not expressed publicly) that Jakarta has been slow to react to the haze because it rarely gets smogged over.
The haze from Sumatra hit Singapore, west Malaysia and even southern Thailand, but not Jakarta the capital.
The haze from Kalimantan regularly hits Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei, never Jakarta.

Of course there is also the money factor. Since it doesn't hit you in the face and nose, why spend money to tackle the issue? That has been the complaints of the governors in the provinces - they need funds to buy tractors to help farmers clear the land.
And then there is a horrible factor often under-reported too: Some of the burnings are/were suspected to be from the big Malaysian companies with palm oil landbanks there. And on Indonesian paper-pulp and palm oil companies.
Added to this are suspected corruption, and the problem will never go away.

So now, the projects carried out by Singapore and Malaysia are hoped to help out the state provinces of Jambi dan Riau (Indonesia has a total of 33 provinces - propinsi or provinsi, equivalent to Malaysia's 13 states).
In July, Singapore officially handed over air quality and weather monitoring stations to the Jambians, see here.
Not much, but this is part of Singapore's contribution of S$1 million (RM2.3 million) to help out in Jambi that also included teaching farmers zero-burning practices.
And then there is the push to let local farmers go into tilapia fish-farming, instead of burning land every year to make way for new crops.

Malaysia is helping out in Riau, with weather stations and canal-blocking projects.
See report here. I can't seem to find more details like how big is the project and how much it costs.
Malaysia is also trying to persuade its three Malaysian palm oil companies with a total of 180,00 hectares in Indonesia to do more to curb open burning.