By Binta Jaiteh
Tenants renting shops at the Serrekunda market have expressed concern about high cost of renting shop despite dragging business in the country.
Modou Conteh who had spoken with this reporter complained bitterly on rent high cost while appealed to the government to help build new markets within the Greater Banjul to ease the burden of business people who have no other means of income than at the market.
“Imagine wherein a person spends 500,000 on building but each year he or she will always taking opportunity to impose the burden on the poor, forgotten that we will continue to suffer and face the hardship together,” he said.
According to him, there is a shop in the market costing D500,000 “even its length is not up to 4 meters that is too costly this is kind of the issues we are facing.”
According to him, it is the responsibility of the government to have conversation with the landlords regarding rent, “we all know how people are suffering with regards to the rent issue. We also rely on this business to feed our family.” Adding every month in his small store, he pays D1500, and business is terrible, you cannot have the price of the ballot and also save the same amount each day.
There are lots of opportunities in the country that the government needs to invest in so that the rate of youth unemployment can be solved, poverty rate is drastically increasing and nothing is working well in all the sectors as far as country is concern most especially now, he explained.
Talking about himself, “I deal with second hands clothes I used to buy a ballot of Abaya for D7000 previously but sometimes when you visit, is either scarce or price increase. I call on the government to set up an executive team that will strictly monitor and setup price control across business sector.”