By Ezekiel Talatau
WHILE most times we hear reports concerning how the affairs at the Honiara central market affects the public, much less is reported on the other side of the coin – which is the plight of the farmers and sellers.
Speaking with a local market seller yesterday, a Ms Lensa Ngora, she said they face a lot of challenges when it comes to food price.
“The problem with the food price is that, people nowadays are only considered the cheap food price that fits their own pocket. If the prices is increase, most of our foods will not be paid,” she said.
“As farmers and a market sellers, we have face a lot of challenges on how we can meet our own expenses and our demand.
“If we decided to sale our foods with low price. It is most likely that we cannot meet our own demand but to save the need of the people. This is a big loss for us.
“For each day, we have to pay our town council fee and sometimes, at the end of the day, what we earn does not meet our fee expenses.”
Esau Ija, a local seller at the central market says, “Some of us are not from Guadalcanal, we are from other provinces, and we are here to sale our foods to help us, gain some profits so that we can find some things we need in town, when we go back to our provinces.
“The problem with us today is that, most of the prices of foods we sale is not worth us a profit, this is because, our expenses such as sea fare, sea freight and town council fee are increase and our food price is not supposed to be this low.
“For example, if we sell our cabbage for 15, most people well only go for the lower price which is 10. This is really unfair for us.
“There are growing concern on some of the some local farmers in Central market thinking that, the price of foods sales here must meet our expenses in order for us to sustain and continue to do marketing.
“If what we earn does not meet our expenses, then it likely that the most farmers will not be tolerated to do marketing in the future.”
