‘Wage hikes needed to avoid food riots’

Brown bread's price has risen 8.51 percent since last September, the report says.

Brown bread's price has risen 8.51 percent since last September, the report says.

Published Oct 16, 2014

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Durban - If wages did not increase and the price of food, electricity, transport and household debt remained high, the poor working class would fast approach its tipping point and “we will enter a new age of hunger riots and food protests”, said a report released in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday.

The 2014 Food Price Barometer report was compiled by the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (Pacsa) and was released to coincide with World Food Day on Thursday. Pacsa is an NGO working towards socio-economic justice and transformation.

Although the report was based on research conducted in Pietermaritzburg, it painted a picture of what was happening nationally, said the authors, Julie Smith and Mervyn Abrahams. They said the mushrooming protests across the country and increasingly protracted and violent wage strikes indicated that workers could no longer afford to feed their families on their wages.

Based on research from last September until last month, the report looked at the prices of 32 basic food items from four different retailers that served the low-income market. The basket of food increased from R1 509.34 to R1 640.05, a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent.

It said certain cheaper food products that poor households had opted for had now become unaffordable. This was leaving people hungry.

The food items included maize meal, which increased by 6.98 percent; brown bread, up 8.51 percent; cake flour, which jumped 13.88 percent; potatoes, 29.42 percent; chicken, 17.45 percent; cabbage, 19.25 percent; and fresh milk, 21.64 percent.

Households with seven or more members were spending between R600 and R1 000 a month on food, which meant they could not afford to buy a basket of food every month. This had substantial negative implications on health, dignity and well-being.

“This situation undermines any prospect for workers being more productive in their workplace,” it said.

While there was enough food in the country, people did not have enough money to buy it.

Poor households were not eating dairy and red meat, which had substantial health implications.

The agency recommended that the government focus on ensuring staple foods were affordable, overcoming income poverty through greater employment and linking the value of the child support grant to the monthly cost of ensuring a young child’s nutritional requirements were secured.

Another suggestion was to introduce a grant, of about R645, for pregnant and lactating mothers to account for their increased energy and nutritional needs to ensure their babies had the best possible start.

Also, the government should facilitate immediate interventions for households that sometimes or always went hungry. Support should be increased for the creation of an affordable food system, which included small scale farmers to increase agricultural production that provided nutritious and healthy food that was affordable and grown close to the table.

The Mercury

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