How it is done department:
p. 79 · Read in the full issue
Black Market In Rice
In Fiji
SUVA, July 5.
INDIAN black marketeers pay Fijian rice-growers 4d. or sd. a pound for padi although the “controlled” price is slightly under 2d. The padi goes to Indian millers, for processing, at about 2/- for a sack of 200 pounds, and is then sold to the rice-consuming Indians at any thing from £6 to £8 a sack, without coming on to the open market.
This thriving business is mainly in the hands of Gujeratis—a generic term for non-Fiji-born Indians. It is illegal, of course, but it is as difficult to track down the practice as it is to buy rice in the European, Chinese or Indian shops of Lautoka, where the racket produces a perpetual Indian wail to the Government to do something about it.
Mr. Stan McCosker, of “Matala” planta tion, Rabaul, New Guinea, recently arrived in Britain, where his wife and children have been living since evacuation days.