Ketua rumah and the food supply chain

Displaced people will now have to congregate in fewer places in order to obtain their weekly groceries. The less obvious effect, but something every ketua rumah would have noticed by now, is that food is getting harder to come by.

Penolong Ketua Rumah, The Star

In recent days, under the seriousness of the movement control order (MCO), one particular directive from the authorities – that only the ketua rumah (head of the household) will be allowed out of the house – caused a little running joke among our circle about how all the ketua rumah would be panicking as they tried to choose which fresh vegetable to buy for the family in the supermarket.

I feel that this is actually the scenario on the national scale when it comes to controlling and restricting the movement of people who are trying to get their daily food supply.

In order of what is needed for human survival, after air and water, we need food to survive. I believe the availability of food in the country is finely balanced by supply and demand. The businesses that operate in this industry would have ensured that as little waste as possible occurs, as it will hit their bottom line. Therefore, when the authorities make any changes to this ecosystem, they must put more thought and care into how they go about doing it.

Case in point; on Thursday (March 19), the authorities announced that smaller markets that are not in a brick and mortar building are no longer allowed to operate. These include “umbrella” markets like pasar tani and even the SS2 market. Lo and behold, the consequence of this is the heavily congested Section 17 “brick building” market on Friday, causing the police to be called in to disperse the crowd.

The knock-on effect for many people who use markets like SS2 is that they must now range out to the “brick markets” or supermarkets. Any ketua rumah would be able to tell you that wherever they usually go to buy food, they have specific stalls to head for and they can do a market run within 30 minutes. Close down their regular market and they will be a bit lost, at least for the first few times, in the new place. This causes congestion when you have many ketua rumah walking about trying to decide which stall to buy from.

This is the most obvious and immediate impact, where displaced people will now have to congregate in fewer places in order to obtain their weekly groceries. The less obvious effect, but something every ketua rumah would have noticed by now, is that food is getting harder to come by.

Over the past few days, I have heard about (and seen for myself) empty supermarket shelves and chicken stalls running out of stock. By closing down the pasar tani and “unofficial” markets, the authorities have thrown the food supply chain off balance. The problem is that the daily food requirement doesn’t change because people must eat every day, but the food supply chain has been choked by the closure without any plan put in place to restore the balance between supply and demand.

Supermarkets and their suppliers are used to an amount of food that they bring in daily. It is hard to adjust this without any prior notice or planning. The same can be said of market stall operators in bricked market buildings. Moving tonnes of food around is no mean feat. Every pasar tani stall operator has a lorry or two to do this.

Also, I would have thought that an outdoor market would be the best place to buy essential groceries in terms of reducing the spread of Covid-19.

Yesterday, I read that the authorities are looking at restricting the movement of people in the Kuala Lumpur wholesale market. Please, I implore the ketua rumah of the authorities, consider what you do when managing the food supply chain. You are moving further up the food supply chain and disruption at this level to the ecosystem might push our plenty-for-everyone situation into a not-enough-food situation.

The food supply chain is a well-oiled machine, so don’t try to fix it when it’s not broken. In summary, please consider:

> Re-opening the smaller markets so there will be less congestion as it spreads out the people. They will be able to quickly go in, buy what they need and get out;

> Open air-markets may be more effective in reducing the spread of Covid-19 with the help of adequate ventilation and the sun’s UV-rays;

> Posting police or other enforcement officers to ensure nobody is sitting down and having a chin-wag; and

> Devise a queuing system, but there’s no need to stop people just trying to get their weekly groceries by closing down markets.

Keep in mind that demand for food is constant.