John Ndlovu
As the pre-christmas shopping period reaches its climax this reporter carried out a survey on what consumers are targeting mostly.
We also sought out to find out which shops are more favorable to the shopping public both in prices and supply of goods.
Long queues were observed in the major supermarkets like OK, Pick N Pay, and Choppies stores with buying mostly food ahead of the Christmas and New Year festivities.
The shoppers were mainly shopping for basic commodities like cooking oil, rice, meat and sugar.
The following results were obtained from the survey; at Pick N Pay cooking oil was ranging around ZW$2475, rice at ZW$ 3569, at Choppies rice was pegged at ZW$3999, beef at ZW$3899p/kg, chicken at ZW$3000 p/kg at OK shop cooking oil was pegged at ZW$3320, Chicken at ZW$5999.
Zim GBC News spoke to some of the shoppers to find out what they think about the current christmas rush and the current christmas commodity prices.
“I am disappointed by the current economic crisis as some of the goods’price tags have been removed from the shelves especially the ones needed during the festivities as this indicates that they want to increase their prices, sicina sesisehluleka ukwenza ibugdet.”Stated a woman who identified herself as MaDube.
“Ikhisimusi leyi iyabe inzima shuwa into ebuhlungu yikuthi sizayidlalela emnyameni into engakaze iyenzakale loke ngathetshulwa yingwe, shuwa akungitshele abantwana bazagida bajabule njani okhekhe shuwa mntanami njengoba amagetsi ehamba kanje, kunzima kakhulu shuwa, ngapha lemali ayikho lamanzi ayahamba, lezinto zikhwelile ezitolo kunzima mntanami.” Said Gogo MaMlambo a senior citizen who resides at Emganwini surbub.”
Besides the high cost of commodities, another issue that has dampened the spirits of most people is of spontaneous power outages.
There is also the issue of water rationing by the City Council.
Meanwhile, President E. D Mnangagwa was quoted in the Sunday Mail newspaper saying, “Zimbabwe can look to a bright Christmas as the country is expected to have enough electricity for the festive holidays due to the coming of stream of Hwange unit seven, fresh power import from Mozambique and reduced consumption from industries.