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The ever fearless and eloquently outspoken Chairman of the National Grand Coalition (NGC). Dr. Dennis Bright, has hit very hard on the prices of basic commodities in the country as comprehensively espoused below and he explained thus;
The Sierra Leoneans who have been following the steady rise NGC in the political theatre of Sierra Leone will call that since March 2018 we have been monitoring the prices of basic food items in local markets, items such as rice, pepper, oil, onions, maggi that the poorest of the poor need to prepare a simple meal for the family.
Although Sierra Leoneans complain everywhere that living conditions are worsening every day, it is not easy for them to measure to what extent their condition is deteriorating. These market surveys give an idea of how bad things are for the common man or woman.
Furthermore, we try to estimate the cooking ingredients that will needed to prepare a meal for a family of four (father, mother and two children) a family size that is admittedly extremely small for typical poor families which ten to be big and extended. When the cost of a basic daily meal is compared to the minimum wage of a sole breadwinner, we discover that since this Government has been running our lives, a minimum wage earner’s income, if spent on food alone, does not last for long; in fact, in this month of January 2022 when a basic meal for four cost Le 68,000 per day the entire wage of Le 600,000 will last for only 9 days; so since the family has other compulsory items to pay for such as rent, transport fares, clothing and medical bills, one can assume that parents and children will have to go without food some days. Without but fare, without light etc. this is the misery to which our people have been reduced while people in power are spending fiti fata on themselves, callously blind to the sufferings of the poor and stone deaf to their cries. And yet they keep congratulating themselves, for some job well done that only they can see.
As the day of reckoning draws closer, we present to you, once again, our market survey for January 2022. The prices of the food items are compared to the price levels in March 2018. Between 2018 and 2022, the prices have been dancing up and down year in and year out, but they have always been higher after 2018.
According to Public Review Newspaper, this January, the lowest increase has been the price of a bag of rice which is nearly 50% higher than in March 2018. As everybody knows, some 40,000 metric tonnes of rice have magically appeared at Water Quay just in time for the election campaign. Maybe, the expectation is that Sierra Leoneans are fools and will fall for the trick; that they will eat rice until they forget how much they have suffered and repeal their 2018 mistake of voting in the vampires. Time will tell.
Badly, some people are more interested in flying in the air, cooking elections and sacking the right women who are doing their job than rescuing the poor people of this country that are gradually sinking into disgraceful poverty and marasmus.
