Rice aid allegedly sold to flour mill

Rice aid allegedly sold to flour mill

JAKARTA (JP): An official of a non-governmental organization
(NGO) accused the City Logistics Agency (Dolog Jaya) of illegally
selling rice donated by the World Food Program (WFP) to a flour
factory and not properly allocating it to the needy.

Farid R. Faqih, coordinator of the Pangan for the Poor (Param)
NGO, said on Tuesday he had received very low quality rice from
Dolog Jaya for the past eight months, while normally the quality
of rice provided by the WFP was good.

He said he suspected that some Dolog officials had profited
personally by changing the rice, selling the good quality rice at
market prices and distributing the low quality stock from Dolog
to the poor.

WFP, which has sponsored the rice distribution program since
April 1999 and has cooperated with the now defunct state ministry
for food affairs, appointed Param to sell rice to the poor at
half the average market price in a special operation in the
capital.

The program was launched in the wake of the economic crisis
that blighted the country in late 1997 when millions of people
could not afford to buy the food staple.

The agency's distribution division chief Ibnu Shihab denied
allegations that his staff had committed irregularities, saying
that the rice might have spoiled after being kept too long in the
storehouse.

He said the WFP's rice donations from the United States were
of low quality, prompting Dolog to ask the WFP to provide better
quality rice from other countries.

Farid, however, said Dolog should be made responsible for
storing the donated rice properly and maintaining its quality so
as not to create health hazards for consumers.

Farid said there were indications that some Dolog officials
had sold the good quality rice to various markets in Jakarta and
allocated the spoiled stocks from the storehouse to the poor. He
did not elaborate.

Strongly protesting against the Agency, Farid symbolically
returned seven of the 50 tons of spoiled rice to Dolog. The rice
should have been sold at Rp 1,000 per kilogram, or at about half
the average market price.

During the first three months of the WFP rice provision
program, the commodity was sold to some 12,000 families every
week in the city's 10 subdistricts.

Farid said the quality of rice received by Param since last
August had been deteriorating. As many as 85,000 tons of rice
were sold at special prices for the poor during market
operations, 21,250 tons of which were distributed by Param.

Farid noted that Param members learned in December that
some of the rice from the U.S. which should have been sold at a
special price was transported to a flour factory in Cirebon, West
Java. The factory bought it at Rp 1,700 per kilogram.

Urging the WFP, the National Logistics Agency (Bulog) and
Dolog Jaya to provide better quality rice for the poor in Greater
Jakarta areas, Farid said Dolog should clarify to the public the
circumstances of the sale of the WFP donated rice to the flour
factory. (06)