Our nightwatch reporter was in Bo Southern Sierra Leone over the weekend and was amused by the abject poverty that is hitting Sierra Leoneans in the last two years.
A retired banker in his early seventies, Morie Jusu with a huge family making a living out of his pension and agricultural activities, used the Mende word “Gbangbanghor’’ which means extreme difficulty to describe the current state of Sierra Leone’s economy.
Pa Morie said the level of poverty in Sierra Leone had never occurred since he was born and bred in this country some seventy years ago. “Sierra Leoneans especially low and middle income earners are finding it difficult to make ends meet”, he noted.
The veteran banker disclosed that their wives who used to sell ginger beer, bisab, cold water, and other items when there was appreciable electricity within the township of Bo were now facing difficulties as there was now acute shortage of electricity.
The story is also the same for people engaged in other sectors of the local economy especially retailers. They are complaining price hikes in the cost of basic commodities which they retail to their customers on a day-to-day basis.
Fatmata Koroma, a retailer who trade in cosmetics, told this medium that they were hugely constrained to explain the incessant price hikes to their customers. “We have no option but to also hike our prices so as to meet our operational cost”, she noted.