City organizes cheap bazaars for poor residents
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As part of efforts to ease the impact of the fuel price hikes, the Jakarta administration held the country's first-ever "basic commodities" bazaar for poor residents at the National Monument (Monas) park on Friday.
The bazaar, which will also be held in other areas across the country, was officiated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The bazaar sold basic commodities including rice, cooking oil, sugar, toothpaste and noodles to some 1,000 poor residents from subdistricts in the capital. They were given coupons worth Rp 50,000 (US$10) that they exchanged for various packages of goods.
"We will ask every municipality to organize a bazaar every two weeks until December this year," Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso said.
"We have yet to decide where we will organize the bazaars at the municipality level. But, we will choose places that can be accessed easily by poor residents," Sutiyoso said.
In order to participate in the bazaars, however, residents have to show their family welfare or fuel compensation cards.
According to Farida Effendy Anas, wife of North Jakarta Mayor Effendy Anas who had been assigned to organize a similar bazaar in North Jakarta, the bazaars target all poor residents in the capital.
"We will organize bazaars in different places in order to reach out to poor residents," she said.
Aside from organizing bazaars, Sutiyoso said that the city would also monitor the prices of basic commodities in the markets.
"If certain commodities become scarce in the markets and prices go up, we will intervene by increasing supply," he said.
Although fuel prices were raised only on Friday evening, prices of commodities in the markets have increased significantly, forcing residents to dig deeper into their pockets.
The price of chicken, for example, is now selling for Rp 8,800 per kilogram from Rp 8,000 last week; while beef prices jumped 9 percent to Rp 48,000 per kilogram from Rp 44,000.
The price of flour rose to Rp 4,400 from Rp 4,000, cooking oil Rp 5,800 to Rp 6,100, and eggs jumped Rp 7,800 to Rp 9,000 per kilogram.
Following the plan to scrap the fuel subsidy, the government shall be giving cash assistance to over 100,000 poor families in the city starting Oct. 1.
Each family will receive a cash payment of Rp 100,000 per month, which will be disbursed every three months.
The disbursement, however, is likely to see some delays as the Jakarta office of the National Statistics Agency (BPS Jakarta), which is tasked with verifying data of poor families eligible to receive the cash assistance, have not yet completed their work.
"As of today (Friday), we have only managed to distribute cards to 40 percent of total poor residents recommended to be recipients in the program," said BPS Jakarta head Sunari Sarwono.
He said that human resource constraints had slowed down the verification process of poor residents in the capital.
"We only have 250 officers with total supporting staff of 4,396 to handle the whole process from examination through to verification of the recipients in 44 districts," he said.
"Hopefully, we will be able to finalize the distribution of the cards before the fasting month of Ramadhan that starts on Oct. 4," he said.