FAIR question, although it won't solve any of the problems with regards to rice, that we are facing, hence READ : the government should ignore his whining, in the manner it did so during Hari Raya.
SO what if suppliers were using dirty tricks like mixing the local SST rice with imported SST rice, and then selling them off as imported rice?
WE don't live in a perfect world, and some back ground perspective need to be put in place on why the suppliers are resorting to such action? Is it greed or is it because most were milling at losses?
THE gauranteed minimum purchase price by miller's are RM1,200/MT1 from RM750/MT1 in 2008, while the retail price has been hovering at about RM2.60 per kg for decades now.
OBVIOUSLY, citizens would say, that the miller's have broken the law by doing what they are doing now and should be punished.
TRUE, but if too many people are doing it, then it is better to change the law instead of punishing the people by going on a witch hunt.
If Mat Sabu's meeting on Thursday with READ :Bernas and other industry players end up to be a meeting on trying to find the missing rice or a witch hunt on who is to be blamed, then we are not going to achieve Jack shit.
WHAT should we do then? LISTEN to the millers and farmers, because they have a very sensible and logical solution to get us out of this mess as well as to make the disappeared rice reappear. READ : Abolish use of local, imported rice labels.
SIMPLY abolishing the labels, will not do the trick, instead we should make it mandatory for SST local rice and the SST imported rice to be mixed at a ratio of 70 per cent local and 30 per cent imported, and allow free market to take its course.
THIS, way farmers get a better deal, millers won't need to cheat the consumers.
WHILE, we are at it, we should use block chain technology to track, grade, and monitor the entire rice sale process from the farmer, to the miller, to the retail players and to the end consumer. CASE CLOSED!!!!
