As Ramadan approaches | Families concern about failure to secure their essentials in light of increasing prices in Deir Ezzor

Deir Ezzor province: Families in Deir Ezzor are getting ready for the incoming Ramadan by securing their essentials. However, the skyrocketing prices of basic products and food burden most of the region’s families, especially with the ongoing free fall of the Syrian currency against the US dollar, where most of the shop owners in that areas deal in the US dollar. It is worth noting that the Syrian pound against the US dollar has recorded 7,500 SYP.

 

In Ramadan, breadwinners are required to secure appropriate amount of food and other products which families need during this holy month. Meanwhile, the lack of monitoring by relevant authorities has spurred many merchants have been stockpiling most of those products to sell them later in very high prices.

 

SOHR activists have monitored the prices of some basic products, which are as follows:

 

• Sugar: 6,400 SYP a kilogram.

 

• Rice: 3,800 SYP a kilogram.

 

• Tea: 6,000 SYP a kilogram.

 

• Cooking oil: 48,000 a four-littre bottle.

 

• Tomato: 9,000 SYP a kilogram.

 

Speaking to SOHR, a displaced man known by his initials as M. T. living in Muhaymidah village says “in the ten days which precedes Ramadan, prices have increased greatly. I bought a ten-kilogram bag of sugar for 66,000 SYP. I work for the Autonomous Administration and my salary will be enough only for the first week of Ramadan.”

 

A teacher in a school in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor known as “Abdullah” has told SOHR that his salary is 360,000 SYP and that he cannot secure his family’s essentials in light of the current unaffordable prices and lack of monitoring on shops, where prices are varying from one shop to another, as he described.