Fingerprint Checks

The Times reports a new approach to scanning in Venezuela's state run supermarkets   - in future people's fingerprints will be recorded to prevent customers from buying too much milk, flour and cooking oil because these basic foodstuffs are in very short supply.

Now I wonder how this will work because it seems like a bureaucratic nightmare with checks being made at checkouts presumably before people are allowed to leave with their shopping  baskets.

And how will the new limits on shoppers be decided, how much is too much flour or milk or cooking oil?

So whatever way you cut things this new policy amounts to rationing by another name which   I imagine is likely to prove highly unpopular because food rationing is normally associated with times of war or national emergency.

But who wants to be spending several hours every day shopping for basic groceries. 


Venezuelan shops take fingerprints to thwart hoarders

Food and basic supplies are increasingly scarce - Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

By James Hider - The Times

Venezuelans scouring the country’s supermarkets for increasingly scarce food and basic supplies will soon have to provide their fingerprints every time they buy something, the government has announced.

President Maduro said that the new measure would help to prevent people buying too much milk, flour and cooking oil.

The socialist leader blames hoarders and price speculators for the shortages, which have grown much worse in his 15 months in office, while the opposition blames the inefficiency and corruption of the state-run market.

The move, described by the president as an “anti-fraud device”, is likely to come into effect at the end of this year or early next, officials said.

Special scanners have already been introduced in state-run supermarkets, where people queue for as long as six hours every day to buy basic subsidised groceries.

The new rule was announced a week after the government began closing the western border with Colombia every night in a drastic attempt to curb fuel and food smuggling by entrepreneurs taking advantage of the huge state subsidies provided by the socialist administration.

The government said that about 40 per cent of the country’s cut-price goods were being shipped secretly to Colombia. It deployed 17,000 extra troops to the border and announced that they had intercepted more than 100 tons of contraband food.

The opposition has denounced the new fingerprinting measures, calling them a covert way of introducing rationing as well as an infringement of shoppers’ privacy.

With the centralised economy looking increasingly shaky, and with inflation running at about 60 per cent, Mr Maduro has ordered government troops in recent months to take over privately owned shops and sell goods at what the government deems fair prices. However, many merchants say that strict government price controls make it unprofitable to sell their wares, while restrictions on foreign-currency exchanges make it difficult for traders to buy abroad.

The economic problems have led to shortages not just of food and lavatory paper, but also of coffins, toys and the sacramental wine used in Roman Catholic church services.

President Maduro’s popularity has fallen from 51 per cent to 39 per cent.