Honiara is going through some rough patches at the moment in its daily running. First there are the huge price hike in Rice and Public Bus Transport!

The price costs more than double and is disruptive of most already tight family budget. The Bus fare for example did not change by means of any law but was only tempered with by general consensus of most private bus owners ( who manage and run most town bus transport in the town). The cost of $2 for adult and $1 for students and children was announced and confirmed by the town council this morning as as effective is $4 for adults and $2 for students and children! While the main argument by the bus owners is the increasing fuel cost and vehicle maintenance and parts there are concern that the doubling price increasing of bus fare is unfair and unrealistic of current livelihoods and earnings. This means that a returning cost for a working adult of one stop is $8/day. $48/week. $152/month!That is too much! There were some temporary civic disturbances that occured in public buses, with those boycotting bus rides and walking to offices and schools. For some its just a good excuse to be late. But seriously there is no Act to control such public transport price. But in true Honiara style it will absorb into daily routine soon.

The Price of food is also climbing. Rice price however is causing more waves because most people nowadays regard rice as main staple diet.The usual buying of rice is in its bulk form of bag. The 10 kg bag of rice is most popular and affordable by the family standard in Honiara  and can often last a family of five up to the next pay cheque. So with the price of a 10kg moving from $55-60 to $100-120 nowadays life is getting tough here for food. Not to mention that the 20kg bag of rice has climbed to $200. There goes the money.

There was a sense of panic in the first few days of the price announcement. Although there were protests and outrage from individuals in media, there was no marching and placards display. People  just quietly took in the bad medicine, becuase for most they see that all of these changes are beyond the governments control. This is a global crisis so what is a poor country like Solomon Islands can do.  We do best what we always do in these situation. Adapt and improvise.

 

Something to think about

Time out: I was going to post this yesterday but the internet was just too slow to load that I gave up half way..hope its still sounds fresh as yesterday.

The weekend was okay. I did everthing weekend as possible, sleep though most of daylight and woke up the whole night, you can probably guess the effect of that on my Monday. I like getting as many information as possible on Monday about whats going on in Honiara ( that means reading the four page local news of Solomon Star and the recently added whole page of Western Comics- nothing comical happening in Honiara I presume) and the world as soon as I hit the office on Monday. This is probabaly the effect of lazing around the whole weekend and starving for ideas and inspiration after two days of spells.

The local news- not much happening, that is if you called nomination for a Lord Mayor of Honiara City Council headline news ( these HCC guys never do much so I dont know, who really cares?). So I was flipping through the newspaper and loading the internet as well. Then an article caught my eye! It says “How the Rich Starved the World”, well that ticks my curiosity and I clicked opened a world of crisis. Ok I promised that this blog will be free of anything that is going to sound I-hate-the-world but just bear with me here for one post. According to the article, the  world(the poor especially) is going to starve if the rich country keep making policies to increase more bio-diesel fuel it says. Simply means that more food goes into processing biofuel and less for food consumption. We are talking about clearing a whole forest to plant crops for bio disel.Hhmmm that sounds environmently friendly. As a result food prices will double in 2008. It will be much better if I’m reading this article in 1990 so that I can stockpile or something but we are talking the very present here. Well to make it worse, I have been talking with a couple of friends about the food price dramatic increase in Honiara recently because thats the only thing people in town are talking about right now. Everything has become double expensive. The price of rice especially because its a main staple diet here. There are already some food riot in countries such as Haiti ( see the article ) becuase food price are rising as much. Now we have history of riots in Hoinara and I hope nothing like this comes up , since we are just recovering from a recent one.

In Honiara the rising dependency on Western influence food such as wheat, diary and rice means most of the money people are making will be spent on food in shops. Hey don’t worry I hear some say we can just improve the local domestic market and keep away from rice easy. Ok but let us consider the prices for domestic food transportation  and why the prices of local food  are also increasing …it is because of rising oil prices more thatn $100 a barrel!

I am appalled at the greed most rich countries are showing. it comes to light that as was in history, and is now current, we developing countries are still oppressed by global factors that is beyond our control. I have idea though…Do you want to start a food rio..ok stop that is a bad idea! Nothing is going to come out of that except exhausting the already under nourished resourced police force. In fact I cannot think of a solution other than hope that whoever is responsible for informing our leaders have access to such information and that they can voice this with other developing countries in those ever important overseas trip they keep taking ya!