A charcoal seller in Kissy Town says a price per a bag of charcoal has risen including local foodstuffs sold in the market.
This, she said, it is affecting them a lot.
“We don’t buy things the same way like we used to in the past few years; everything has gone up these days,” she said.
Salamatu Kamara talks to Africa 24 few weeks ago. She lives in Kissy Town, about a mile in Waterloo. Waterloo is about 26 miles off the capital Freetown.
Salamatu says she couldn’t make up enough profits from charcoal sales a day because she buys a single bag now at a very expensive price.
In waterloo, the price on a full sack of charchoal is costing charcoal sellers about Le 70,000. The material is used for cooking purposes as it is light up to produce heat.
Though environment authorities frown at charcoal use because they produce smoke that may affect people, charcoal is widely used for cooking in Africa continent.
In Sierra Leone, charcoal cook-stoves are commonly used by households in urban places.
And the sellers who sell the product in large quantities don’t seem to have alternative means of income for survival. So when prices go up on the artificial burnt out charcoals from hard wood, the high cost on the product would render many traders to go out of business, sometimes.
“We don’t get enough profits from plastics-ties since we buy each bag now so costly. The money we earn from it can’t be even enough to feed the home,” the woman, in her early thirties, explained.
Salamatu is a mother of four and her husband hasn’t employment.
It means she takes care of the children almost entirely on her own.
“They [the children] will have to go to school and they don’t sell often like they do while they are on holidays,” she said, adding that things are pretty tough for them under the current inflation of prices on goods and services in the country.
Walking up few kilometers from where Salamatu was seated, some market buyers of various local goods were similarly expressing frustrations over the high cost on food commodities in the market.
Asked about what she thought was the situation at Kissy market, a woman said briefly: “We don’t want to complain anymore; we leave everything to God.”
But, another buyer was not silent; she spoke up: “Things are not easy my brother; we are now buying a cup of paste groundnut Le 10,000. Two days ago, it was sold Le 7,000 a cup. And some of us; our husbands don’t work or have business.”