By Michel Outridge

Poonam Pitamber and her husband operate a chicken plucking business at Le Destin, East Bank Essequibo and has five employees.

The couple is from Meten-Meer-Zorg, West Coast Demerara and they have five children.

Pitamber related that they are renting the place just to conduct their chicken plucking and to buy eggs and chicken.

They don’t have a chicken farm but would purchase chickens on a wholesale quantity from poultry farmers.

When the team visited she was overseeing an order of chickens which were being plucked by employees.

“We open from 7:00hrs to 19:00hrs and we sell chicken at any quantity, one just has to place an order and we retail at $240 per pound and a tray of eggs is $860, the prices have increased and we had no choice but to up our prices, as well,” she said.

Pitamber related that they usually buy 5,000 chickens to re-sell but now they will buy just about 2,000.

She explained that after chickens are plucked are sold based on orders and the remainder goes in freezers to be sold the next day.

Pitamber added that the chicken head and feet are sold separately and most people would buy the head for dog food.

The business is called Farm Price. She reported that a few times they suffered losses when thieves jumped the fence and carted off with frozen chickens from the freezers.

Next door is another business, owned and operated by Kenrick Dookie, who is from Parika.

The 23-year-old told the Pepperpot Magazine that he started his small business two months ago after he constructed a building to house his small shop.

Dookie is an auto electrician and specialises in car alarms, electrical installation and sells vehicle accessories such as amps, tweeters, lights among other things.

“Where I am from there are a lot of business that do this kind of work so I decided to operate elsewhere and try to make a living,” he said.

Kenrick’s Auto Music and Electronics is located at Public Road, Le Destin, East Bank Essequibo and is the only business of its kind there.

Dookie said al time progress he will expand but for now, he is happy he started small and at present cannot afford to pay employees.

He also sells car air fresheners and does most of his work at the location and is quite comfortable there owing to the fact he is self-employed and has no boss.