Jakarta – Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday that he had ordered the country’s navy to sink foreign ships intruding the country’s maritime territory and stealing fish and other resources.

The order was made following the reports of rampant illegal fishing in the country’s waters that has led Indonesia suffers a huge economic loss.

“Sink it directly. Let’s sink up to 100 illegal fishing ships so that the others would be reluctant to do so,” Jokowi, as the president is known, stressed at the State Palace.

Nevertheless, the president ordered to evacuate all the crews and those on board first before the sinking.

The policy aims at protecting the country’s resources at sea from illegal exploitation, said Jokowi.

The president unveiled that over 5,400 ships illegally exploit Indonesia’s resources at sea every year.

That makes the country suffers financial loss of about 300 trillion rupiah (about 24.712 billion U.S. dollars) annually, said Jokowi.

Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of about 17,500 islands. Source: Xinhua