AfricaPress-Tanzania: DESPITE a government directive which requires traders to sell sugar basing on indicative price it announced recently, Tanga residents have gone without it for a week.
The situation has prompted some residents to use honey as a substitute for sugar. Recently, the government announced indicative prices for retail sugar per kg in each region to check unscrupulous traders hiking sugar price.
Following the situation, defence and security committees in Tanga and Muheza districts on Wednesday mounted an inspection operation in collaboration with Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) in warehouses, wholesale and retail shops to establish whether traders were hoarding the commodity.
In the past one week, the commodity in the region was trading between 3,000/- and 4,000 per kg.
Speaking to ‘Daily News’ in separate interviews, Muheza District Commissioner Mwanaasha Tumbo and Tanga District Commissioner Thobias Mwilapwa said the inspection aimed at nabbing unscrupulous traders who were hoarding the commodity and those who hiked the price.
For his part, Mr Mwilapwa said they had discovered that some traders were using the shortage of sugar as an opportunity to hike the price of the commodity.
“We inspected retail sugar shops and caught some of them selling the commodity at high price and warned them after conceding to going against the government directive for filling a special form as commitment to not repeating the offence,” said.
For her part, Ms Tumbo said in her district there was an acute shortage of sugar and after inspecting wholesales, warehouses and retail shops they found that some businesspeople were selling sugar at a high price and legal action would be taken against them.
“After our inspection we nabbed some businesspeople who were selling sugar at a high price and others who were hiding it, further action will be taken against them,” he said.
Some of the people who talked to ‘Daily News’ said they had opted for honey although they expected that its price would increase due to high demand.
“Honey is in high demand due to lack of sugar as an alternative of sugar, 250ml we purchase at 3,000/-,” said Mr Hassan Kisimbo, a resident of Muheza Town.
