Team to look into starvation reports

BOGOR (JP): A fact-finding team of local councilors has been assigned to look into reports that a number of villagers in Parung subdistrict are facing starvation due to soaring food prices.

"Our team started visiting some villages today. We want to see if the reports are correct and not just exaggerated rumors," the council's speaker, Eso Soekarso, said on Tuesday.

If the team finds evidence backing up the reports, he said, the council would urge the administration to distribute basic food commodities to affected villagers at government-subsidized prices.

Another alternative is to plant crops on unused land in the affected areas, Eso added.

He did not disclose the team's size or the villages being visited.

According to a resident of Kuripan village, Junaedi, some people could no longer afford to buy rice due to skyrocketing prices.

In order to feed their families, some villagers had resorted to stealing rice from their neighbors.

"Many people have found it too difficult to buy rice, so some of them have stolen it from their neighbors," he told The Jakarta Post.

Junaedi said one of his neighbors, Ada, had told him that she had two liters of rice stolen from a boboko (traditional bamboo- made rice container) on her kitchen table.

The housewife, he said, had gone out to collect some water from the well outside her house. When she returned, the rice container was missing.

She rushed to report the case to the local neighborhood chief. When she returned to the house, she found her boboko in its original place but it was already empty.

Similar incidents have been reported by villagers in Cibentang, Ciseeng, Cihue Mekar, Parigi Mekar and Cibeuteung Muara, Junaedi said.

"It may sound like a fairy tale but it's true," he said. (24/emf)