Many people have noticed that many items that were once so common on the shelves of local stores are no longer there. Some store owners say they have transportation difficulties for the things they order from abroad for resale in Palau, and that is why they do not have them on their shelves. As far as we know, no one has identified the main causes for the sluggish atmosphere many of our local businesses are going through at this time, but most observers say something is definitely wrong and the Government must “wake up” and correct whatever it is that is causing big problems in our business community before we loose many of our businesses.
Some people say the root of the problem is the high cost of electricity, which PPUC has instituted in recent months. There have been instances where power supplies to individual homes, businesses, and even government offices have been cut off because of unpaid power bills. There are other people who say, however, that PPUC should not be blamed entirely for the problem because what it had done was simply a response to the dramatic increases in the fuel prices which outside companies had placed on the products they brought to Palau.“Our Government should investigate the dramatic increases in the prices of the fuels that outside companies are bringing to Palau to determine if they are legally justified. The Government must also investigate itself to see what ministries have not been paying their power bills, which had contributed greatly to the shortage of funds PPUC needs to purchase the fuels it needs to run its power plant”, they said.Store items whose expiration dates have lapsed must be taken off the shelvesTwo years ago we wrote in this column that the law requiring that goods for sale that have expiration dates or specific time frames at which they should be taken off the shelves has not been fully enforced by the Government agency responsible for enforcing that regulation. We are afraid the same problem still exists today.We have seen in certain stores some items (canned foods and bottled or canned drinks) whose expiration dates have long since passed, but were still on the shelves. Our larger shopping centers such as Surangel and WCTC Shopping Center are the exceptions. We have not seen any item for sale in these two stores whose expiring dates have lapsed. We cannot say the same about the small stores. In these stores, the prices for these items have been reduced significantly, but the customer is not advised that their expiring dates have lapsed. It is left for the customer to read the labels of these items to find out whether or not they are still safe for human consumption. This may work for a person who can read and understand the label, but for an elderly customer it does not do any good for him or her.The Government agency responsible for monitoring “outdated” items should investigate all the stores in town and remove from the shelves those items whose expiring dates have passed before they make people ill from food poisoning.
