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Let Them Eat Sugar and Bread To Enrich Fritz Mevs

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LET THEM EAT SUGAR CANE WATER AND BREAD

A researcher gave a Haitian woman friend of hers H$ 15 and together they went off to the La Saline market, which is located in a poor slum area. She wanted to see what and how much food the woman would buy with the H$ 15, which is about $5.55 U.S.

The Haitian woman was an experienced shopper.

This is what she was able to purchase before the money ran out:
* A small basket of 12 plantains
* four onions
* four tomatoes
* about 3 cups of cornmeal
* four bouillon seasoning cubes
* a cup of sugar

That was it. She explained that since the coup, market prices had quadrupled.

The most common meals for working families are cornmeal with onions or some boiled plantains with beans-- when beans can be afforded.

Almost everyone is down to one meal a day. Most have to borrow what they can to survive.

Many working families have only bread to eat and rely upon sugar cane water to fill themselves up. The poor are barely surviving, but they are getting sicker.

At the "model" apparel factory owned by one of the richest families in Haiti, the highest paid workers received H$ 4 a day-- US$ 1.48. The average transportation cost to and from work was 44 cents a day, while a meager breakfast and lunch came to 33 cents.

This left 71 U.S. cents to bring home at the end of an eight or nine hour day. Multiply this by six days and you have $4.26 to meet a family's expenses for a week. According to USAID, food typically accounts for 64 percent of the cost of a basic "basket" of necessities needed for the minimal survival12 of a poor Haitian family.

This means that a working family would have approximately $2.73 a week with which to feed themselves-- a little less than half of what our experienced Haitian shopper had to spend.

The remaining $1.53 would have to cover rent and all other expenses.

The USAID mission in Haiti could immediately perform a valuable piece of research by thoroughly investigating how working families in Haiti are able to survive on the prevailing wage being paid by Haitian, U.S. and Asian contractors in the assembly sector.

Sylvain, July 18 2010, 3:13 PM

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