Africa-Press – Mauritius. There’s no hiding the fact that inflation is exerting a harrowing effect on the living conditions of the lower to middle classes and particularly the elders and widows who depend on the state pension.
Many are reported to have cut down on unnecessary pleasures, delayed their house plans, reduced their outings or social interactions, and even trimmed down on their food plates or their medication. The people fighting price rises by trying to buy nothing – BBC News
Even government MPs are aware that the electoral promise to increase pension from about Rs 6000 to Rs 9000, duly implemented after the 2019 elections, has been considerably eroded by the currency depreciation of some 25% against our main trading currencies and the steep rise in logistical costs of maritime freight coupled with higher prices for pharmaceutical, agricultural and food produce internationally.
The pandemic was already heralding a new era, which the current NATO-Russian confrontation, with its own lot of miseries and tragedies, has only compounded.
Government lavish lifestyles, bred by taxes and borrowings, should already have taken a steep hair-cut; juggling with contracts to friendly businessmen at central and district levels should also have borne a cost-conscious reduction accompanied with greater transparency. Furtherevery effort to reduce our dependency on costly foreign imports would have been in order.
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