By Awa K Sanneh
Second-hand clothes dealers have shared how the global coronavirus pandemic is hampering their business operation which they said it has led to massive profit loss and that business operation is held at standstill for about a year now.
One of their problems include public concept on the business in the Covid period, which they said people are afraid of buying the second-hand clothes because they are saying the clothes are coming from the hard-hi countries across Europe.
Buba Jabbie, who has been second-hand clothes in the Serrekunda 2007, shared how his business is operating in this Covid period saying: “now there is a huge difference in the selling [clothes] because now businessmen who sells second-hand clothes are many, especially when this covid 19 pandemic started it has really affected our business by taking it back.”
“The number of people that comes to buy second hand clothes has drastically reduced compared to before the inception of the covid 19 pandemic which he described a big hindrance for them. If you do follow social media you will hear some people saying that the second-hand clothes are contaminated with covid19 virus, while others will say the clothes coming now belonged to some of the people who died as a result of the pandemic,” he added.
Lamin Jammeh, also a dealer in second-hand clothing said: “there has been a lot of changes especially in 2020 and 2021, noting that there has been a lot of difficulties because of recent commodities are very expensive and people do not buy like the way they used to and that has disturbed them a lot.”
“The pandemic has stop everything, they hardly sell and as a result of that, we can’t have money to buy new ballots and that is because people aren’t buying like before as some people will tell them food commodities are very expensive now thus , before buying clothes, food is more of a concern considering the situation of the pandemic. The little you earn some times can’t sustain you for a day because sometimes you sit for a whole day without selling anything, you will go empty handed to your home,” Mr Jammeh said.
