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to buy flour or atta for their families. Many also get jobs as watchmen but also at very low pay and were unable for the most part to afford flour.
Mr. Ujagar Singh, an old friend and colleague in the Treasury, told me in the summer that he and most unemployed Indians known to him were living on rice and not enough of that (the rice ration of 81⁄2 ozs. day a head at 30 sen a catty was insufficient and other rice cost at least 50 sen a catty in the summer and in January 1943 over ¥1.00 a catty for the lowest grade).
a
As regards Hindus and Parsees, most of these have shops with cash and saleable merchandise, or work in such establishments. Messrs. Tyeb, to whom I sold some wool in August last, had stocks and money and beyond having had to move to smaller premises, the staff were then all right. The various, Hindu, Parsee and Mohammedan shops in Wyndham Street and Lower Albert Road were also, and still are, tolerably free of hardship. A certain amount of Chinese silk and other cloth goods are coming in from Shanghai via Canton. Again there was considerable accumulation of stocks of cloth and other dry goods in Hong Kong when the war began. Probably both classes of goods have found their way into their hands to considerable extent. One of
these shops Messrs. Ramchand was actually reconstructing and enlarging their premises.
Work begun
however before the
War.
The Indian wholesale shops dealing in grain, etc., Abbas Khan and a few others, had at the outbreak of war large stocks of Atta, Ghee and Dhall which they held on behalf of the British Food Control an arrangement made with myself as Food Controller early in 1941. The quantity represented four months supplies for the whole Indian community. As these were in their own private godowns they were able to keep most of them after the surrender and they, and the Indian community through them, benefited greatly thereby. Until December 1942 I was able to buy Atta at prices which gradually rose to 1.00 a catty. After that, as far as my efforts to buy it indicated, the supply ceased. I was told
Abbas Khan himself was under. arrest for a time as
pro-British
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