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Cambodia: Profiteering, hoarding and artificial shortages of essential food supplies during Lockdown
The leak of Prime Minister’s voice message on Tuesday 5pm, caused mass panic as hordes of people stormed (peacefully) supermarkets, grocery stores, mini marts and wet markets, rushing to buy food and other essentials and surprisingly, non-essential stuff too.
This gives rise to speculations that the leak could have been perpetrated by people with sinister reasons or it could just have been amateurish eagerness to share the premier’s message with friends and these people leaked the message.
For hours, right up to the eve of curfew, or minutes from the start of curfew, people were still crowded outside all stores in most part of town and those who could not afford such stores, thronged on wet markets where profiteering started almost immediately such as kilogram of pork being sold at 80,000 CR when the normal price is just half of it.
It was the same scenario for other meat and poultry and seafood products as almost all of these are staple food, to the extent of salted duck eggs which also doubled in price.
The humanitarian aspect of the leak was never considered or it may have been.
Leap Chanthavy, a Phnom Penh based analyst said that panic buying and profiteering has been taking place in the capital and other provinces since the last year with regards to COVID-19, the first instance in early March, 2020, then again in November 2020, in February 2021 and when curfew rumours started circulating.
“If sufficient notice was given to the people of Phnom Penh, such as 24 hours before the enforcement of any decisions on curfew and lockdowns, would be quite enough for people to prepare themselves. The issuance of such an order during curfew hours leaves people in despair.”
Though the Ministry of Commerce has assured that sufficient rice supplies are available during the two-week-long lockdown of Phnom Penh capital and Takhmao town of Kandal province, urging people ‘not to worry’ about the lack of rice, people are still worried that the lockdown and curfew will stretch beyond the said period as the number of COVID-19 cases has not dropped to double digits, let alone single digit.
In addition, the number of deaths, from zero in the whole of 2020 until March 2021 and to date, 38 deaths have been recorded as directly linked to COVID-19 and another 5 COVID patients but whose death is not attributed to the virus.
When fear grips the people, rationale goes out of the window, says another analyst, Chea Channary who is political science doctorate holder.
“Fear is complicated. In this case, individuals may wish to act in a socially-responsible fashion, but are concerned that others will not. If they shop sparingly and others hoard, they will be left with the belief that others are acting selfishly and often exacerbates those tendencies in others,” she said.
The Ministry of Commerce, in a joint statement with the Green Trade Company and Cambodia Rice Federation issued on Thursday said people need not panic, which allows opportunists to increase the rice prices.
The ministry said rice stalls of CRF’s members will be increased to different locations in Phnom Penh and Takhmao town from April 15 until the situation returns to normal but they forgot to take two key factors – where are these locations and more importantly, with the lockdown in force, how are buyers going to get access, especially if they are in the same district they leave in. Chea Vannak – AKP/Khmer Times