Empty shelves for cooking oil in Ranau
Published on: Friday, January 06, 2017
Ranau: Consumers in the district have voiced concern over the shortage of cooking oil supply in most supermarkets, mini markets and shops around the town here.Acting on complaints, a check conducted on Thursday revealed that almost all the shelves for cooking oil in supermarkets and mini markets like Milimewa, Sabindo, 99Speedmart, Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia and others were empty.Milimewa Superstore Ranau Manager Alvin Tanus said the shortage of cooking oil started before Christmas last year and they only had olive oil available for sale at the moment.
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"We are also baffled as to why the supply of cooking oil is always cut off. We made orders before Christmas but until now we have yet to receive our order. Probably most lorry drivers are still on leave," he said.He said usually their suppliers, one in Kota Kinabalu and another in Sandakan, would limit their supplies to only 50 to 100 cartons of plastic packets of cooking oil for the superstore even if the order was of higher quantity.Meanwhile, district Assistant Consumer Affairs (PHEPD) officer, Halimin Saping, said when contacted that cooking oil supplies for the district were supposed to arrive on Thursday afternoon.He said his workers, together with the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism (KPDNKK), were presently facing obstacles in the supply of cooking oil in the West Coast area.
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"From the 26 re-packers throughout the State – Sandakan (16), Tawau (7), Lahad Datu (2) and Kota Kinabalu (1) – only a single cooking oil re-packer in Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park (KKIP), which has a quota of 215mt per month, is catering to consumer needs in the West Coast, Interior and Labuan."This forced us to acquire additional cooking oil supply from Sandakan, which would certainly involve higher transportation cost," he said.
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Halimin said most of the retailers and certain bulk distributors do not own licences to trade controlled goods, thus making it hard for them (bulk distributors) to supply such items, for fear of not being able to recover payments for subsidies."We are currently intensifying our effort to control the supply, but there is a high demand from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are supposedly not eligible to use packets of cooking oil. However, we also believe that when we are able to prevent those SMEs from using subsidised cooking oil, the prices for food will also increase.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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