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Rich blamed for hoarding food

Source
Sydney Morning Herald - January 12, 1998

Louise Williams, Jakarta – Indonesia's wealthy, including expatriate staff, faced growing community resentment over the weekend as queuing shoppers blamed the greedy upper and middle classes for buying up stocks of rice, noodles, oil and sugar in the major cities.

Staple goods remained scarce, despite news that an International Monetary Fund team, as well as a separate mission of United States officials, had started arriving in Jakarta to help tackle the economic crisis. Food queues continued into the weekend in most major cities, and the official Antara news agency reported that prices remained unstable. The Soeharto Government announced that a crisis centre had been set up to handle the supply and distribution of basic foods, and assured people there were adequate stocks of staple goods, including rice, to last until March.

The Governor of Jakarta, Mr Sutiyoso, blamed the upper and middle classes for causing the food shortages, which have left shelves empty of staple goods in most supermarkets and created queues at many of Jakarta's traditional markets.

The rush for food, which began when the rupiah suffered a 20 per cent crash on Thursday, has sent prices soaring.

"I strongly urge Jakartans to calm down. Buying up too much food is just a waste," Mr Sutiyoso said. "Lots of people need it. Don't be greedy. The more you buy, the more people will suffer."

Of the wealthy, he said: "It's outrageous. They are hoarding all the food, both fresh and instant. Think of the less fortunate people who can't afford to shop until they drop."

Rising prices at traditional markets threaten to exacerbate the tensions between the rich and the poor, which are fuelled by ethnic differences. Indonesia's minority Chinese, who make up about 3 per cent of the population, play a prominent role in business and trading, and some people openly blamed the Chinese for buying up rice stocks.

A series of riots over the past two years have been triggered by envy of the Chinese minority's business role, and they have become the scapegoats for the grievances of Indonesia's majority Muslim workers.

The Jakarta Post published a front-page photograph on Saturday of Jakarta's poor fighting to buy sugar from the back of a vendor's truck.

Criticism extended to expatriate staff when the conservative Observer newspaper reported that overseas employees were "out in full force buying anything they could stuff into their overpiled trolleys".

The paper said one expatriate was seen "lunging at the last can of Bintang [beer] on the shelf" - a pointed criticism during the current Islamic fasting month when Muslims, who must abstain from alcohol, are unable to drink, eat or smoke during daylight hours.

A prominent Muslim leader said the economic crisis was another form of Western colonialism, arguing that the fortunes of the Indonesian people were being dictated by the rupiah's exchange rate against the US dollar.

The chairman of the Indonesian Ulemas (Muslim leaders) Council, Mr Hasan Basri, said: "Colonisation does not merely mean the entry of a foreign power into a country, but it may take the form of bringing down the value of this country's currency to shatter the economic system." Indonesia's Minister for Manpower, Mr Abdul Latief, has warned that local companies will be unable to continue employing some expatriate workers because their contracts are in US dollars.

Australians make up between 7,000 and 10,000 of the estimated 63,000 expatriate workers in Indonesia. The chairwoman of Indonesian Consumers, Ms Tini Hadad, said of the panic buying: "I fear if this problem is not tackled soon, more widespread upheavals will occur as hungry people become angered with the situation."

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