'Cheap' rice not cheap for poor in Kulonprogo

Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Kulonprogo, Yogyakarta

Almost every day is a survival attempt for Trisno Wahyudi, 63, and his family.

They live in a five meter by seven meter bamboo house, or a hut to be precise, with a dirt floor, in Gorolanggu hamlet, Sidoharjo village, Samigaluh district, Kulonprogo regency, Yogyakarta.

Furniture is almost completely absent from their home. In the kitchen, they have five pieces of cassava and less than three kilograms of rice and are expecting uncertain times ahead.

Trisno said that rice was simply too expensive. "Cheap" rice is sold at Rp 1,000 (90 US cents) per kilogram.

Although he has been taking on any odd job he can in order to survive, he can earn only Rp 10,000 per month, not enough to buy a month's rice.

"The rice was from our neighbors who could afford cheap rice. As for us, we don't have enough money to buy it," Trisno told The Jakarta Post on a recent visit to the village.

He lives with his daughter-in-law and her three children -- the eldest is in the second year of elementary school, the second at kindergarten and the youngest is still less than two months old.

Trisno's son committed suicide, apparently because he could not endure the economic hardship.

As they could not afford to buy rice continuously, they harvest the crops and vegetables that grow in the small yard of their home as their staple food.

"If there is cassava in our yard, we eat cassava. If there is corn, we eat corn. We eat whatever we can. What else can we do? We do not have any money to buy rice," Trisno said in Javanese.

He and his daughter-in-law said they would be quite content with daily life as long as they could provide rice once a day for the children, who would eat it with salt, and vegetables from their yard.

They do not have money to buy seasoning or spices with which to cook. They would consider themselves lucky if they could buy tempeh for the whole family once a week or two.

Trisno and his family are one of many poor families in Kulonprogo, a regency in Yogyakarta.

They are not lazy people. They usually work in the fields, but they are currently jobless because during the dry season, as now, the area is dry and cannot be planted.

Drought is regular during the dry season, but during the rainy season, people have to prepare themselves for floods and landslides.

The area is prone to the disasters, particularly adjacent to the Menoreh mountains located in the northern part of Kulonprogo, bordering with Magelang in the east and with Purworejo in the west.

Chief of Gorolanggu hamlet, Dedi Diatmoko, 30, said that many of the 54 families in the area were categorized as poor. As they did not have regular incomes, they started to sell trees in their fields to buy food. They would sell any kind of tree, including those that were still very young, at a low price.

"Yesterday, Pak Rejo sold eight teak trees and nine coconut trees for Rp 1 million. They were the only trees he had," Dedi said, referring to one of his villagers.

What happens in the neighborhood hamlet, Tetes, is just the same. A total 25 of 47 families in the hamlet are very poor. They can hardly afford to eat rice with vegetables twice a day.

Each of the residents has only two changes of clothes, according to statistics.

"That is the official data from the government. Based on my observation as chief of this hamlet, there are more people who are poor. Almost all have nothing to eat," Maryadi, chief of Tetes hamlet, said.

Kulonprogo regency has a population of 179,102 people, or about 51,000 families. The government's data shows that 36,082 families are "very poor" while the rest are "poor." They live in dozens of villages in the regency, especially in the northern part, close to the Menoreh mountains.

Dwi Wicaksono, head of the information and documentation service section at the regency, acknowledged the poverty that struck the area, characterized by people who could hardly afford to eat twice a day and lived in houses with dirt floors.

The problem is, he said, they worked as farmers, and when drought hit this area, the farmers suddenly lost their jobs.

"It is very unlikely that they could find another job during this time," he said.

Yogyakarta councillors tried last month to help the people by donating some staple food, although in small quantities. Deputy speaker of the council Boedi Dewantoro said that they provided the people with 180 packages of food -- each worth Rp 10,000, and 20 tanks of water.

However, it is not clear as to how to free these people from the vicious cycle of poverty since they cannot rely forever on the government or wealthy people sympathizing with their plight.

As the rainy season is approaching, the Yogyakarta secretariat for disaster and refugee control has made some relief efforts to anticipate flooding and landslides.

Suwarno, an officer at the secretariat, said that they had built 144 prefabricated home? to accommodate landslide victims. Construction of the houses cost Rp 1.5 billion.

They have also allocated 50 tons of rice, which have been disbursed to all regencies in the province. Each regency received two tons of rice. He added that a coordinating unit had Rp 250 million available in cash, which could be used if disaster struck.