Jakarta (ANTARA) – Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian has asked regional governments to ensure the availability of foodas well as goods and services to control inflation and anticipate an increase in their prices.”Our people must get an adequate supply of food and affordable and sufficient goods and services,” he said at the “Regional Inflation Control Coordination Meeting” at the Home Affairs Ministry’s office here on Monday, according to a press release issued the same day.

To optimize efforts to ensure food security, he asked regional governments to follow what President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has done, namely directly check the prices of commodities at markets.

By making that effort, regional governments would be able to obtain accurate data on prices in the field, he explained. The minister also highlighted that issues related to food are vital and need to be monitored because they are related to people’s needs.

ccording to Karnavian, if there is an increase in the prices of goods and services, the public will blame not only the central government, but also regional governments. To this end, he urged regional governments to cooperate with the relevant parties to resolve such issues.

He also asked regional governments to cooperate with the Regional Leadership Communication Forum (Forkopimda) to resolve problems related to food.

“We may be different in politics, but when we talk about the interests of the community, especially those that are very basic, such as basic food needs, we need to be uniform,” he said.

Karnavian further asked regional governments to routinely hold inflation control coordination meetings in their respective regions.

Regional governments must not only depend on the coordination meeting that the Home Affairs Ministry holds because the situation in each region may be different from the one that the central government is facing.

Source: Antara News Agency