Team to look into starvation reports

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)