LAWD! HOW POOR PEOPLE LIVING?!

THE cost of some food staples has doubled since 2016. 

Many more items have seen price increases of between 60 and 80 per cent over those years. 

These retail price hikes are confirmed in a spreadsheet analysis provided by a large grocery chain. 

The evidence disputes the Central Statistical Office’s claim that the cost of food went up by 45.9 per cent between 2015 and 2022. 

A packet of a certain brand of rice zoomed from $54.97 to $91.99. 

A 3.8 litre bottle of cooking oil climbed from $39.97 to $95.99. 

Sardines jumped from $14.91 to $29.97. 

Most other food prices tell a similar story of skyrocketing prices. 

International issues – higher energy prices, steeper transportation costs, rising labour charges, and hoarding by some producers – are the major reasons. 

The Russian-Ukrainian war, climate change and diseases are also contributing. 

With an annual food importation bill of just under $6 billion, Trinidad and Tobago are “price takers,” having to grin and bear the prevailing charges. 

There are also domestic factors, such as bottlenecks at the port, higher cost of fuel, bad roads sending up delivery charges, monopolies by manufacturers and importers, and security bills. 

All of that is aside from locally-grown vegetables, which are at their highest prices in Trinidad and Tobago’s history. 

Soaring fertiliser costs (up to 200 per cent higher than in 2020!), five fuel price hikes in seven years, and destructive floods are the primary reasons. 

Who would have ever thought we would see such astronomical prices? 

One hundred dollars for a pumpkin! 

Baigan going at $30 a pound, tomatoes at $25, caraille at $20, a single celery and chive for $12, and chive, lettuce at $15 each. 

Surging food prices is only half of the equation. 

The other half is the inability by more and more people to make ends meet.   

Poverty is on a continuous rise, and, according to UNICEF, is leading to malnutrition, even starvation, among the poor, including school children. 

Economist Dr. Vaalmiki Arjoon says that more than 220,000 registered workers earn less than $6,000 a month. 

The international service MacroTrends, places T&T’s poverty levels among the worst in the Americas. 

Note that unemployment is at a 40-year high, and a quarter of small businesses did not reopen after the Covid-19 lockdown. 

The Property Tax and higher lights bills are looming, and they, too, would affect food prices. 

The Government is unmoved even as destitution sweeps the land, and has dished out $147 million to fund Carnival and little to strengthen the social safety net. 

Carnival, after all, is the opiate of the masses, soothing the pain of the poor and suffering. 

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon wants consumers to “use their purchasing power wisely while shopping.”  

But Gerard Conyers, head of the Food Distributors Association, reminds us that “we import prices. If we get an increase from a supplier, we cannot absorb it.  

‘We have to pass on the cost, like every other business.”  

But the misery of the small man is real, having to duel with the worst inflation and joblessness in modern history, an insensitive government and a comatose labour sector. 

Charity groups and individuals who are providing food, clothes and school books to the needy, are our humanitarian heroes. 

But they cannot supplant the role of the Government to find remedies in a land of widespread destitution. 

The authorities should introduce a range of effective poverty alleviation measures, and especially target the expanding number of vulnerable nationals. 

In all of this, how is the small man living?