Eateries distressed over cooking oil shortage
Published on: Friday, February 10, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: Restaurateurs at the Grand Millennium Plaza here are distressing over where to get their next supply of cooking oil, fearing that the continued shortage of this crucial raw material could soon force them to suspend their operations.Ian M. Krishnan of Krishnan Curry House said that the shortage of cooking oil had been going on for months and many times, they were forced to buy the imported cooking oil to cater to their business."Just two days ago, we went to various supermarkets and were shocked to see all the shelves for cooking oil were empty. Even the very expensive ones were snapped up. We almost took the drastic decision to close shop the next day because of this.
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"Luckily, we managed to find two bottles of imported cooking oil in one of the grocery stores," said Krishnan during a press conference here, Thursday.He was accompanied by Seto Yin Lan of Pheonix Star and Noel Lomu of Padimas Café.Krishnan said that if such incident happened again, it would put a severe burden on their business because of increased expenditures.At the same time, he said, business operators could not simply increase their food price and thus, would be forced to absorb losses.
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"We would like to ask the government what they are going to do to solve this issue, because it is now becoming critical already. My father had been in this business for over 20 years and this is the first time we have had this problem."There is no problem of cooking oil supply in Malaya. Only in Sabah. Why is this happening?" he asked during a press conference here.
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Furthermore, he said, not only is cooking oil in high demand because of the short supply, the price of other raw materials such as onions and flour has skyrocketed, making it more difficult for businesses to sustain profits.The increasing tariffs for both electricity and water as well as GST, he said, do not make life easier for both consumers and business operators."It is getting more and more difficult to carry out businesses. Everything is so expensive and people are forced to pay double the amount they used to pay just a few years ago," he said.Krishnan also questioned why, as the nation's main cooking oil producer, Sabah is subjected to this predicament while the rest of the nation is not.He added that it is not his job to understand that some suppliers are allegedly hoarding cooking oil with the aim of increasing the price for more profit.He said that if the government is indeed aware of this problem, then it is the government's job to tackle it and not to continue giving it as an excuse without any attempt to address the problem."We are not interested on why this happened. We just want it to end. We want our supply to resume as usual. Now, even our suppliers are selling cooking oil at very limited quantity and some, will only sell them to the highest bidder."Why, just the other day, we had to pay extra RM2 just so we can get the supply. Otherwise, it would be given to someone else," he said.The cooking oil shortage was first reported late last year although most of these involved the 1kg subsidised cooking oil packets. The commodity retails at RM2.50 each.However, the problem seemed to have spiralled out of control especially in the West Coast with even the more expensive 5kg cooking oil, sold at more than RM20 each, and imported cooking oil costing more than RM30 per bottle, were snapped up as soon as they were put on the shelves.On rare occasions that the 1kg cooking oil packets are made available in supermarkets, people would form long bee lines just to get their two packet quota of the cooking oil.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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