Empty shelves in supermarkets greet shoppers
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Walking through some of Jakarta's major supermarkets in the past few days, shoppers were greeted by empty shelves.
Supermarket staff had tried to disguise the emptiness by neatly stacking the goods at the front of the shelves, but it could not hide the fact that behind those neat rows there was nothing.
"We had so many shoppers during the weekend, while new supplies have not come yet, probably because of the flooding," Umi, an employee at Carrefour superstore in Pasar Festival, Kuningan, South Jakarta, said on Tuesday.
She said that the unusually large number of shoppers during the weekend was because during all of last week people couldn't get out of the house to shop.
"I guess that once the rain stopped and the roads cleared, the first thing they did was go shopping," Umi added.
The week-long rain and resulting floods virtually crippled activities in the capital, including routine daily or weekly shopping trips to supermarkets.
So, on the first weekend of the month, the number of Jakartans rushing to the stores increased dramatically, resulting in incredibly long waits at the cashier.
"I had to wait more than four hours until I could get to the cashier," Eni, a housewife, reflected. She had returned to the supermarket on Tuesday to "pick up a few forgotten things".
However, shoppers denied that they were shopping to stock up on supplies in case of shortage.
"No, no, I'm not afraid of any shortages, this is my routine monthly shopping," Liza, a housewife, said over a shopping trolley full of cooking oil, detergent and rice.
Goods distinctly missing from the shelves at Carrefour included basic foodstuffs, such as rice and cooking oil, instant noodles, long-life foods, such as dried fish and shrimps, and canned foods, like sardines and corned beef.
Fresh goods were also lacking, and in the refrigerated section of some Hero supermarkets, vegetables, such as carrots, stringbeans, cauliflower and brocolli were missing.
"I couldn't find Indomilk bottled milk and Better biscuits," Ida, a grocery store owner, said while shopping at Makro, a major hypermarket in the capital.
Hero supermarket president Steve Sondakh said that the large gaps on the shelves were also caused by large-scale shopping by organizations that wanted to help flood victims.
Kurniawan, an employee of a private firm in Jakarta, said that he was shopping to provide aid for the flood victims in his office.
"The money's from the other colleagues at work, and we're buying food supplies and fresh water," he said, pointing to a shopping trolley laden with boxes of instant noodles and bottled water.
The disruption in the supply of goods to the capital had also resulted in various increases in the price of goods.
Idjah, a housewife from Menteng, Central Jakarta, said that the price of cooking oil in traditional markets had increased to Rp 4,000 per kilogram (kg) from Rp 3,000 per kg.
"I'm buying commercial cooking oil, but the price has also increased. This used to cost Rp 23,000," she said, while pointing to cooking oil priced at Rp 28,000.
Idjah's shopping trolley was filled with large plastic containers of cooking oil that she said she needed for a wedding at the end of the month.
"I'm stocking up, just in case the price rises further, or, worse still, that there might not be enough stock," she said.
Separately, executive director of the Association of Indonesian Retailers (Aprindo) Kustarjono Prodjolalito said that there was nothing to worry about.
"There is no shortage, only a delay in distribution. But now distribution is almost back to normal," he told The Jakarta Post.