Bread Scarcity Hits Kanifing Municipality

Bakers Want Government to Increase Price of Bread  

By Nelson Manneh

Over the past two days, people living within the Kanifing Municipality have experienced bread scarcity.

This reporter on Wednesday 15^th December 2021 made a vox-pop to find out the difficulties people are facing in acquiring bread mainly ‘Tapalapa’.

Bread served as one of the basic food commodities in the Gambia, that people eat almost every day. This reporter visited some of the bakeries and found out that some of them were open but the bakers were not baking bread as usual.  

Amadou Jallow one of the bakers in Serrekunda Dippa-Kunda said his bakery has not been operating for the past two days because they want the authorities to increase the price of bread.

 “We want the price of bread to be increased because the profit we make is very small when compared to the work we do in baking bread,” he said.  

Jallow said the prices of all other basic commodities have been increasing day by day and the authorities are not doing anything to put an end to it.

 Muhammed Jallow a bread distributor said the profit he makes daily is less than five hundred dalasis. “My work is distributing bread from bakeries to the shops. Initially, I use to save four hundred dalasis daily but now I cannot do that because the prices of all other basic commodities have increased.”

Jallow said the price of bread is the same for the past one year whilst the price of all other commodities increase day by day. He said most of them are now living from hand to mouth as they spent all their income on other food stuff.

Alpha Jabbie a shopkeeper said the government should put some mechanisms in place in order to control the prices of basic commodities. “I don’t support the idea of people increasing the prices of their commodities because they feel like they should increase it without coming up with a substantial reason.”

Mr. Jabbie said Bread Bakers have no reason as to why they want to increase the prices of bread. “All that I heard is bakers said they want to increase the price of bread because the price of other commodities has increased.

At the time of going to the press, this reporter contacted one of the flour company’s in the country but could not get the management to explain their side of the story. Foroyaa will continue to engage flour companies to hear their side of the story.