By Africa 24 team
A piece of a bundle of second-hand clothing in the country has hit a record high with the highest price sold at Le 4 million in Freetown.
And the prices on things do not just sky-rocket but have caused the clothing business to slow down, owing to low sales day-in and day-out, some clothes sellers,had complained.
Talking to a clothes seller at Ecowas street, the main commercial community, in Freetown, Robinho said: “We are buying the ‘junx bail’ [ a local name for second-hand bundle of clothes] so dear now than before, and selling is pretty stiff.”
“We get sell more from university students of Fourah Bay College and Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM).
“But now they have now been coming regularly since undergraduate entering students have not started classes yet due to lecturers ongoing strike action not to start the new academic year.”
The clothes seller admitted how the absence of students’ attendance on campuses of the two prominent public universities is affecting their daily earnings as used clothes sellers in the capital.
“We wish government to speedily address the situation of the lecturers,” Robinho and his colleagues prayed for public universities to resume.
But in spite of this situation they are facing, second-hand clothes seller have since been troubled by Sierra Leone’s government hyper-inflation on basic goods and foodstuffs in the markets.
The ongoing unstoppable crisis on the economy is disrupting the costs on overseas’ used clothes, causing them to be expensive now than before.
Robinho detailed the different prices on the bundles of pieces of clothes sold to them by agents retailers.
“We are now buying the small ‘bail’ [plastic bundle of second-hand clothes] to a tune of Le 2 million, 3 million and 4million, depending on the quality,” he explained.
When compared to the cost bought four years ago, Robinho said ‘a bail’ or a plastic bundle of pieces of imported clothes was costing them as cheaper as Le 1 million, or Le 1.5 million [ the highest price then] and Le 800.