Grocery prices out of control

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Filling a grocery bag in Jamaica is now a difficult task. It’s frightening that a tin of bully beef – the usual ‘quick-fix’ for the working class – is now a luxury item costing between $500 to $700. We have reached a point where the average worker, earning a minimum wage of $16,000 weekly, has to do mental gymnastics to buy food. By the time additional expenses, such as electricity, water, or the taxi fare, all of which seem to increase every time gas prices fluctuate, are subtracted, there is almost nothing left.

The struggle is real. To survive, people are forced to flock to the Chinese wholesales and supermarkets in every town. They are not there for the “experience” but are hunting for every $20 discount and wholesale prices just to keep the pot smelling. The anxiety of not knowing whether their cash will cover the total cost of the items they picked up is written clearly on their faces.

There is a bitter irony in our history. Lobsters were once so common and low-class that were fed to prisoners. Today, lobster is for the wealthy, while the “poor man’s food”, like bully beef, is priced so high that the working class is being priced out of their own diet. It is a strange world when the food that used to sustain the average Jamaican has become a “treat” that many can only hope to afford on a very good day.

Our leadership needs to stop looking at spreadsheets and start looking at the actual prices on the supermarket shelves. If the cost of basic food keeps climbing, what is the small man to eat next?

SHANIA ROBERTSON