Each week for most of 2023, this newspaper canvassed 10 people in all parts of the country on how they were faring with the cost of living. Their accounts were direct and oftentimes gut-wrenching. They are taking a beating and having to agonise over which priorities can be afforded and which have to be deferred or even abandoned.
Here are some of their testimonies:
Shazie Persaud, a 43-year-old shop owner: `The cost of living as a single parent of three children is hard to manage because everything is expensive in the market. In addition, I have my mother who can’t work because of her finger disability, so with her pension and the little from my shop I take care of her. I had to quit working with people and open a shop to provide for the home and the kids because the salary I was receiving when working with people was low. Even though I have a shop, business is slow, I barely get sales and people are crying out how the items are expensive, so I would explain to them that the wholesalers are raising their price too’.
Chidanand Khedo: `I’m feeling the rise in cost, on my electricity bill mostly but in general, the cost of living is high on everything, including my medications I use daily. I normally live alone and my mother would visit sometimes. Normally I would use my refrigerator, fan and light. And, this would take my electricity bill up to $13,000 now when before the same things were used, and my electricity bill was $6,000/$7,000. Another thing is, I would normally receive a monthly sick benefit from the government and when I finished purchasing my medications I need, I would barely have money to buy foodstuff because things are expensive in the markets.’
Indranie Singh: `Everything gone up in the market and I’m not working because I’m a sickly person. I put in for public assistance four years now and until now, I haven’t gotten through. I used to fry plantain chips and sell, but I had to stop because the price have gone up and because of my sick foot. Two pounds of plantains now is about $400, before the same two pounds was for $300. Also, the oil to fry it is expensive, a small bottle of oil now cost $700 and before it cost $300. My brother used to support me, but he died. The cost of living is affecting me a lot because I can’t afford to buy things and some days I don’t have things to cook.’
Rajpatie Persaud, an 80-year-old pensioner: `The rising cost of living is affecting me very bad since recently I had a surgery done and I live alone and when I have to buy items in the market I’m seeing that everything is expensive. These times are hard and I could see that everyone is hustling for themselves. I think the government should look into the price that food items are sold for in the market. Also, the taxi can’t come in the street by the seawall because it’s not good and I would have to get assistance to walk out the street to the taxi whenever I have doctor appointments. I would like the government to visit the last street by the seawall and help the residents and also to do the roads’.
Kurt Solomon: `Everything expensive in the market. I have to work really hard to provide groceries for my family. You can’t say you’re staying home for two days. Sometimes, you don’t have things to eat in the home and you have to cope with it. I have two children and I’m finding it hard to keep up with the rising cost of living. Look at how a small pack of Demerara Gold sugar cost now, it cost about $460, before it was $260.’
Saskia Higgins, 27-year-old fruits’ vendor said: `Everything gone up in the market. People can barely afford to buy things with the given salary. The salary people working for now, they can hardly afford to eat. Also, you’re not getting to save anything and everything just raising. Some days, I would be short of food in the home because things are so expensive in the market. The chicken price, for instance, is high since a pound of chicken now cost $560 and $600 at some places and before it was cheaper, it cost about $360/$400 a pound’.
Volda Woolford, 61-year-old fruits vendor: `The cost of living is very high today because when you suppose to pay – let’s say, $20 for an item, you are paying $50. I’m a housewife and I have to sell my fruits to help my small daughter to provide for her children and the household. My daughter’s salary alone can’t do to pay the utility bill and for food. She even have to pay the daycare. She gets about $18,000 per week, when taxed she left with about $13,000/$15,000 for that week. The government should help single moms out there.’
Ramdeo Sooklan: `The cost of living is high and it is affecting me a lot since my monthly pension cannot support both my wife and I. We are now selling drink to carry us through the month. My wife and I live alone and I can tell you that the small business do help us to buy things we need for the month, including our medication. Sometimes the hospital would be out of medication and we will have to find the money to buy it’.
Tasha Fortune, a 46-year-old vendor: `Things are very expensive and they are getting very, very hard in the country. The budget that was read in parliament, instead of the government reducing taxes on vehicle, they could reduce the prices on food items so poor people can afford to buy food items. Right now poor people can’t afford it that’s why people saying, we have a lot of thieving going on in the country. What are we going to do, seeing that the cost of living is rising in the market?’
Grounding with the people is a technique also favoured by President Ali. He undoubtedly hears some of these accounts during his visits but perhaps not in the concentrated and consistent format as enabled by this newspaper’s work. Four years after oil production began, the salt of the earth have seen little benefit from the money pouring into the coffers from this exploitative deal foisted by ExxonMobil and the APNU+AFC government on the people. This government has been content to make a handout here and there in a manner that makes it look as if it is doing a favour for people whereas its task is to administer the funds coming into this country in a manner that is equitable and fair to all sections of the country. It has also employed novel initiatives like subsidising dialysis costs and marshalling bank loans to various sectors such as poultry and forestry but without any overarching plan. With US$1b ($200b) in oil revenues absorbed into last year’s budget and an even bigger figure expected this year, there should be no pockets of deep-seated poverty at all. But there are. In each and every village around the country this is evident whether in terms of people eking out a living on a sea dam, a single-parent woman fending for her children without any means of seeing where the next meal is coming from or the aged unable to fund food and medical needs. The cry for jobs is also palpable. The part-time job programme introduced doesn’t cut it.
This government has not addressed how serious pockets of poverty are to be tackled. There has been no study or poverty mapping despite the fact that of all of the governments since independence this is the one best resourced to undertake such a project. It has had more than three years do this. Ideally this should be entrusted to the Ministry of Human Services. Instead what is evident is that each ministry has embarked on their own `do-good’ mission which undoubtedly helps – at least for a while – but which is completely lacking a framework that establishes how the less fortunate are to be assisted and how that is integrated with local government and community groups
As a new year begins and a big budget beckons, President Ali and his advisors should cogitate on the concerns raised by ordinary citizens in the SN cost of living series and try to plot a path away from the episodic interventions and steer a course for a gradual and assured improvement in the circumstances of the less fortunate commensurate with a stable earnings pattern from oil proceeds in the coming decades.
