Some Housewives in Port Harcourt, Rivers, have appealed to the Federal government to increase workers’ salaries in order to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal on their house-keep allowance.
The housewives, on Tuesday, said that they were the most affected in the subsidy removal as the prices of commodities in the market increased.
Most of these housewives said that mere mentioning of “I want money” annoyed their husbands who actually had spent some money on school fees, fuel and other bills.
Mrs Lucy Odinka said that January had always been a difficult month having come out from Christmas spending and entered into school fees payment and school preparation expenses.
“January house-keeping allowance is never enough because of the extra expenses on stocking the children’s snacks, drinks and other school needs.
“With the increase in fuel, prices of provisions are now increased and by the time you finish buying things for the children, the allowance would not be enough for food for the month,” Odinka said.
Mrs Joy Philip said that the annoying thing was that the open market had become a supermarket where prices of commodities were not bargained for.
“At the market, any attempt for you to price things would make some sellers to abuse you while some would just snub you. It is only a little few who would explain to you on how they paid high transportation to get wares,” Philip said.
Mrs Ada Owiriwa said that some men did not know how to manage themselves well when they were cashless but would quarrel with their wives at any little provocation.
“Many housewives would suffer if government did not add any money to the workers’ salaries because they would still use the old amount to feed the family monthly even when food stuffs increased in price.
“Last week of every month is always a difficult time because the allowance remained little or nothing and you must provide food for your family.
“And, this is the time some husbands and wives quarrel because of money,” she said.
Mrs Comfort Cookey said that civil servants were always the worse hit by any policy on fuel hike because their salaries were their only source of income.
Cookey said that other professions would only increase the cost of their services to cushion the effect of such policy.
“A trader would simply build in his transportation fare in his commodity price and sell to recover the fare but the civil servants would not have anywhere to retrieve his own fare.
“The market women would buy at a high cost and would build in their transportation fare and profit before selling while the civil servant would be forced to buy.
The housewives told the government to consider the plight of the workers and the families in any harsh economic condition before making policies.
They also said that the rate of high blood pressure among the civil servants and their wives would increase because of added worries on how to make ends meet.
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