Study: Households turning to loan sharks
Rising food prices have forced poor households to visit loan sharks in a desperate bid to simply put food on the table, a Pietermaritzburg advocacy group revealed on Thursday.
This emerged when the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (Pacsa) on Thursday released their Annual Food Price Barometer, a measurement of prices on different foods that are consumed in households.
Pacsa’s director, Mervyn Abrahams, said their studies showed that households were battling to make ends meet and they had consumed their groceries before the end of the month.
“We found that women are keeping their families fed and kids in school through debt from spaza shops, loan sharks, credit schemes and interest free loans from friends and relatives,” said Abrahams.
The study, which was released ahead of World Food Day on Friday, looked at the basic food groups, from starch, protein and vitamins consumed by an average family per month and compared prices from supermarkets of the food groups.
Abrahams said a balanced diet had become a luxury for poor households.
“What we are seeing is that poor households are eating food which is extremely deficient in the necessary nutritional requirements for productivity, health and well-being.”
Abrahams said that the deficiencies in energy, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals were serious and according to him appeared to be resulting in more cases of stunting and malnutrition as well as a growing number of cases of obesity, diabetes and hypertension.
He warned that the healthcare system would be severely strained by patients whose common ailments might have been resisted through a nutritious plate of food.
“Unless the problem of income and food price affordability is addressed, the pressures put on clinics and hospitals may become increasingly severe and possibly even insurmountable,” said Abrahams.
There was concern over the findings which revealed that prices on cheaper meat cuts had escalated by over 60 percent in the past year.
“These lower quality portions are consumed by a large number of households and it is worrying to see that the price for such has risen so astronomically”, said Abrahams, adding that there was a need for an investigation into the matter.