A sampling of urban working class Guyanese, predominantly women with school-age children did not find them as upbeat as President Irfaan Ali might have hoped they may be about what he had to say recently about the “deliberate initiatives and policies” that his administration has undertaken “over the last four years to address the rise of global food prices and cushion the cost of living for Guyanese.”
After the President had been quoted in an official release published on Saturday August 3 as saying that his government had “implemented deliberate initiatives and policies over the last four years to address the rise of global food prices and cushion the cost of living for Guyanese,” respondents to whom the Stabroek Business spoke to during visits to two urban municipal markets expressed the view that current food prices, particularly the prices of fruits and vegetables cultivated in Guyana, continue to be beyond the reach of large numbers of urban Guyanese for whom – according to one respondent – shopping in urban municipal markets has become a permanent bargain-hunting exercise on account of what our fourteen respondents told us were the exorbitant prices of meats, fruit and vegetables.