I will continue to improve my products so they will not be copied. Our (rice) sacks have been copied and falsified, to demonize the government through Bulog
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The State Logistics Agency (Bulog) will immediately supply rice products wrapped in vacuum plastic packaging as a response after discovering that inferior quality rice was being distributed in the market with Bulog logos.

"I will continue to improve my products so they will not be copied. Our (rice) sacks have been copied and falsified, to demonize the government through Bulog," the agency's President Director Budi Waseso said at a press conference at the Jakarta Bulog Office, Monday.


He then revealed several findings in the field related to the crime committed by unscrupulous persons or mafia rice distributors of the Non-Cash Food Aid (BPNT) program.


The counterfeiters replace Bulog rice with other lower quality rice in the Bulog-logo sacks and sell then n the market. As a result, people think that the low-quality, smelly, and lousy rice with a dull color is being produced by Bulog.


The rice distributed under the BPNT program was a quality product, Waseso explained. He also suspected that these counterfeit sacks bearing the Bulog logo were being traded freely on online sites for Rp1,000 per sack.


" Sacks of rice are being sold online through various spurious outlets. This counterfeiting needs to be immediately dealt with because it is certainly collaborating with syndicates," he said.

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Therefore, in the distribution of BPNT rice, Bulog had begun to market fortified rice which has been vacuum-packed in plastic to the Beneficiary Families (KPM).


Fortified rice is also a healthy rice innovation enriched with various vitamins consisting of vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B3, vitamin B6, vitamin B9 (folic acid), vitamin B12, iron and zinc.


Bulog will also launch 50 variants of quality rice from medium to premium with vacuum packaging so the people can distinguish Bulog's products from others.


"There are several systems that we have built so that in each package we know that the quality is good, the origin of the rice can be known and the age of the rice can be known. If there is no data in the packaging, it is not (the rice) from Bulog," Waseso noted.

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Translator: Mentari D/Yashinta Difa Pramud
Editor: Gusti Nur Cahya Aryani
Copyright © ANTARA 2019