OPINION: Cost of living (food prices) in Guyana: the agony, the real story

Last Updated on Wednesday, 18 September 2024, 21:39 by Writer

by GHK Lall

From Free and Easy in Essequibo Coast, Region Two and SN’s Cost-of-Living serial, episode 93, a Guyanese name Hubert Sukhai spoke hauntingly and painfully. It was about what is not so easy, but exemplary in difficulty, as faced in the circumstances being endured by his family. The plight of his family of more than ten is that of countless other families in various communities across Guyana. I extract what he shared and take the liberty of leveraging his reality into the presence of one of the bigger and brighter people in the PPP Government, arguably all Guyana. For the edification of the Hon. Dr. AK Singh, the exceedingly learned Guyanese minister, not the Russian machine-gun maker, I respectfully tender that he and his people analyze what Mr. Sukhai articulated in such bitingly powerful terms. It is all in the numbers, and his set of numbers don’t lie, because other Guyanese at other times and in other places have said close to the same thing, oftentimes even worse. It is what they live with daily. They put to shame that 1.6% CPI fantasy that came out of Dr. Singh’s sophisticated ministry. To Dr. AK “1.6%” Singh, the simple invitation is for him to check the numbers for himself: the pain of one Guyanese man, one extended Guyanese family, one Guyanese community, and the one Guyanese story that gets from bad to worse. It has the resonance of Holy Writ.

“For example, a couple months back, a bag of rice cost $1,400/$1,600; now the rice cost $2,200. Also, a few months back, a small bottle oil cost $100 and something; now the oil cost $300 and something.”

Rice going from $1,600 to $2,200 a bag looks like 37.5% to a nuts-and-bolts citizen like me. But what do I know? Now, if I had used $1,400 a bag and to $2,200 where he said rice last stood, then that represents a 57% increase in the price of rice in “a couple months” to requote Mr. Sukhai. It is his tough, unforgiving mid-year report on the wretched state of his family. For many poor Guyanese, there is no staple more used, more basic, than rice. I do not think that Minister Singh needs the subtitles, but I present them to him nonetheless: that is not imported Basmati rice, sir, about which Mr. Sukhai wailed his lament, but domestically produced and packaged grains. If Guyanese have so much trouble with the price of rice today, then it could be that grass may be on their menu as the days multiply. Further, “a small bottle oil cost $100…now the oil cost $300…”. Right from the top of my head that is an increase of 66% in a couple months. Whoever came up with that CPI increase of 1.6% qualifies as a schemer of schemers; whoever seeks to justify should get a peerage for obscenity. It is more than yet another insult to injury. It is laughing at struggling Guyanese in their ongoing odyssey and ordeal with food prices. Basic food prices, dammit, like rice and oil. I touch no other basic, point to no other contributor to SN’s chapter 93 cost-of-living horror story, for Mr. Hubert Sukhai spoke for all of them, though almost all of them shared food price experiences close to his. No more should be needed, for the SN series is this stripping, denuding, and humiliating of people and government and leaders. For Dr. Singh’s information, those are real people out there crying their anguish. They are not lifeless, bloodless imprints on a spreadsheet or a computer screen. They are too many and in too many places in Guyana, Dr. Singh. All those great statistical numbers and indexes, yet this great many Guyanese languishing in the economic basement, because basic food items keep climbing and soaring away from them. How about pausing and pondering on that for a bit, Dr. Singh (and Dr. Ali and Dr. Jagdeo)? I think I just engaged in another futile duck bathing appeal and exercise. Three ducks and I made no headway, not even a drizzle recording, not one reaction. I put down my head, simply keep on going the road chosen.

Whether Minister Dr. Ashni “1.6%” Singh is past the point of shame and discomfort over the revelation of one citizen is irrelevant. But I am pierced for Mr. Sukhai could be me, save for the accident of circumstances. All those fancy calculations and percentages about CPI increase, probably some fancier footwork, means nothing for a flesh and blood representative citizen like Mr. Sukhai. Thanks to SN’s cost-of-living series, have we not heard from 92 other Sukhais from 92 other hurting and harried places pummeled by prices in oil-rich and statistically rich Guyana? The government has its grand and gaudy numbers, huge numbers of Guyanese are left to contend with bitter reality. Every Monday, the nation learns the number that runaway food prices do on them. Perhaps this should have formed the basis of Dr. Singh’s doctoral thesis.