By Mama A. Touray and Sainabou Gassama
Petty traders and market vendors in serrekunda and other markets are complaining of high prices of essential commodities such as food in particular fish and vegetable while they are, on daily basis, calling on authorities for an action to address the situation ahead of December election.
In their words, Sirra Sonko, a fish vendor said: “the challenges in this fish business are too much even people in the grave know the difficulties we are facing in market as everything is expensive. Before you can buy fish pan at D600 but now it’s available at D1,500. Remember that you will put some ice-blocks to ice it then bring them to market to sell, the challenges and difficulties we encountering daily are enourmous.”
Amie Cham also a fish vendor lamented that “fish is costly but we cannot leave the business because it is from it that we are feeding and clothing our children.”
The latest trend is “the fish are now embalmed inside cartoon worth D900 you transport and put ice block if you add that to the cost of the fish it becomes D1000 when you sell it sometimes you do not even have D800 you either sell D750 or less than that and the worst thing is that we have the fish from the Chinese instead of our people. We are urging the government to control our river for us,” she added.
Ramata Taal complained of the hardship and said “fish was never expensive then as they used to buy a pan of fish at D300 or D500 but now it is at D7000 or D8000.”
She continued that with the price they are buying it is difficult for them to make profit and the expectation that government should interfere and help the poor masses “because this business is our source of our income.”
Salifu Saidy, another market vendor, said he imports his commodities from Senegal and his main challenge is currency saying “CFA exchange rate in The Gambia is very high because if you buy your items at a very high price, you cannot sell it at a low price.”
“Therefore, you have to top up the price in other to get profit and that also can be challenging to the customers, we urged the Government to help by implementing price control on those that are in forex department and foreign exchange bureau dealing with CFA on the streets to look into the rate,” he appealed.
Aja Sandeng explained that a bag of cabbage cost D3,300.00 and all of these vegetables are coming from Senegal because during raining season most of the gardeners go to the ‘Faros,’ they only grow vegetables during dry season.
“Is both you buy at D200 or D500 to get the quantity you need and the situation of an extended family and sustaining the family through selling vegetables is a worst situation,” she said.
But quickly added that the only thing that can rescue this problem is to make changes by voting for a competent presidential candidate, meaning that “we will keep on changing till we meet with the right candidate for the country,” she said.
