In our yesterday’s edition we reported that pricing gouging has raised its ugly face in Mahdia following the disastrous fire there which destroyed scores of buildings and hundreds of millions of dollars lost in goods and valuables. As such many residents of the community are under severe pressure having lost all or nearly of their belongings.
According to residents in the wake of that conflagration which destroyed many small businesses, some of the larger ones have sharply increased prices of essential commodities, including food items.
The costs of some foodstuff have gone up by between five and 10 per cent, one consumer lamented.
He said a few business places are really taking advantage of the situation and profiteering is rampant.
Another resident moaned: “There is an emergency here in Mahdia. People are homeless. People have lost their belongings and need to survive. How can they raise prices like this?”
He said people directly involved in the gold mining industry at Mahdia are in a position to cope but others, like public servants and others, especially Amerindians who are not miners are hard hit by the higher cost of living.
Regional Chairman Senor Bell confirmed that he had received and had verified reports about the apparent use of the fire to hike the prices of goods.
He explained that the blaze at the arcade had actually wiped out the small businessmen and, in essence, the competition, leaving what some see as a golden opportunity to maximise their profit margins.
Given the absence of price controls, Bell speculated what could be done in the face of such unscrupulous conduct.
He hoped for the re-emergence of small businesses soon and the only thing which may restore some stability to the prices of foodstuffs at Mahdia.
One would have thought that after such a disaster those that have been unaffected would have made efforts to extend a helping hand to those who were affected, rather than use the circumstances for rapacious profiteering. This is simply unbelievable, especially when it is considered that in these communities usually people live in a very communal style with everyone being each other’s keeper.
But Mr. Bell is correct in a free market system there is very little or nothing that government could do to stop these rapacious business people from jacking up their prices.
However, what could be done in such a situation through a national relief effort through a private sector/government partnership resources could be found to flood the community with consumer goods, particularly foodstuff to provide the much needed relief to the suffering residents.
In this regard, the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association must be commended for the swiftness with which they moved to establish a relief fund. This should have been an obvious logical outcome because miners have a moral obligation to help such communities as they are facilitators of the mining industry in Guyana.
Perhaps too based on the Mahdia experience stakeholders could further examine the possibility of establishing a permanent relief fund specifically for mining communities because one cannot foresee if and when a similar disaster may occur in a similar community.
However, more importantly all efforts should be focused on preventing such disasters from recurring in other such communities by enforcing the laws governing construction of buildings etc.
In the instance of Mahdia it would appear that building mushroomed in a hap hazard manner without anyone paying any heed to whether regulations and laws governing the erection of buildings and structures being adhered to. Consequently, all the structures engulfed in the flames were not separated by a distance prescribed by the building regulations and this contributed immensely to the fire being so destructive.
We should all learn well from the lesson of Mahdia.