The minister cited an incident last week where some 170 hikers stranded in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park due to forest fires were rescued. Earlier in August, a fire burned for nearly a week at the same national park, razing around 550 hectares of land, BBC reported.
He did not say when the closures would last until.
Indonesia is battling fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra, where “widespread hotspots” were reported by the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre on Tuesday.
“Moderate to dense transboundary smoke plumes were observed to cover the North, West and Central Kalimantan, Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and parts of Palawan and Panay, the Philippines,” the centre said on its website at about 11am.
On Tuesday, Pontianak in West Kalimantan was the most polluted city in Indonesia, with an air quality index (AQI) of 851 as at 11am, according to readings from IQAir, a Swiss platform that monitors air quality data.
Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan was the second-most polluted city with an AQI reading of 675. An AQI reading of above 300 is considered hazardous.
In Malaysia, six areas in Sarawak recorded “hazardous” air quality on Tuesday, with Serian district registering the highest Air Pollutant Index (API) level of 408 and Kuching following closely with 407, Bernama news agency reported. API levels above 300 are considered hazardous.
Last week, Indonesia Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said more than 5 million people on Borneo and Sumatra islands were directly exposed to the risks of a putrid haze coming off dozens of fires across the vast archipelago.
He said some 13,500 people were treated for respiratory infections in July and August.