News
Have yourself a very little Christmas
A 50-foot blue spruce decked in red ribbons and silver baubles stands resplendent at the Independence Square arcade and fluorescent angels hang
All Christmassy: The Arcadia in Colombo. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
alongside gigantic snowflakes from the ceiling of Majestic City – but besides such pockets of decoration in public hangouts Colombo seems stripped of the Christmas spirit.
The holiday buzz is still latent in the city and suburbs against a backdrop of political volatility, bad weather and rising prices.
Customers file into showrooms to browse through the discounted goods and file out with fewer presents bought than last year. Apart from sales chalked up by famous brand shops, small and medium scale enterprises seem to be untouched by the season.
The satellite city of Pamunuwa which once teemed with people is bare except for groups of two or three scatteredalong the road.
“Four or five years ago we earned Rs. 15,000 on some days of the Christmas season. Now people don’t have money,” said a vendor of cut pieces and finished clothing, W. Shanthi Perera who has been running a business at Pamunuwa for 10 years.
Diyana Walisundara
“We were forced to increase our prices because now we have to buy cloth from politically-appointed mediators without buying it straight from the garment factories so we don’t earn enough.”
Though the day for presenting presidential election nominees has long passed, campaign posters of the candidates still stare at the pedestrians of Battaramulla and Maharagama. The biggest problem for the people is not, however, the stormy political atmosphere but the cost of living.
“The change in the general prices of goods and services happens upwards,” said P. Paththayam who was shopping at the Pettah vegetable market.
Hettiarachchige Prasanna Indrajith
Even the shop owners agree to this. “The heavy rains have destroyed the papaya and pineapple harvests so the prices for these two fruits have gone up, and sadly, the vegetable prices have increased,” said a fruit and vegetable stallholder at the Pettah market, Hettiarachchige Prasanna Indrajith.
Erratic weather conditions across 12 districts have caused a drop in supplies which has driven up prices.
Pamunuwa: The goods are there but where are the shoppers?
Apart from this, the notorious practice by wholesale and retail vendors to hold back stock and create artificial price rises at Christmas could see prices of goods increase further.
Officials are also on the lookout for another time-dishonoured practice of unloading goods past their expiry date on the market at this season.
“We are launching the seasonal surveillance program to keep an eye out for businessmen who sell expired goods by changing the label or sell their goods above the maximum retail price. And if any vendor is caught not displaying his prices on fruits, vegetables, cereals and the like he would have a court case on his hands,” warned Consumer Affairs Authority Director-General, J.M.A. Douglas.
Everyone has accepted that this would be a costly Christmas.
The reduction in custom is not only limited to the markets: even the popular tourist and teen attraction, Majestic City, faces this problem.
“The road construction and changes in the traffic arrangements on Galle Road and Duplication Road make it harder for people to park and shop at Majestic City. With more shopping complexes coming up around the city we can no longer expect the same number of customers to keep turning up every year,” said the cashier at the Larich outlet in
A decorated shopping mall in Colombo
Majestic City, Diyana Walisundara.
The rains beating down on Colombo are also quenching the Christmas feeling. A downpour on December 9 left roads such as Thunmulla junction, Horton Place and Bullers Road under water. The flash flooding coupled with incomplete road constructions creates another menace: traffic jams.
As the Christmas and New Year season plus preparations for the January presidential election continue, police have decided to implement special traffic arrangements fromDecember 20 to January 5 in Colombo, Anuradhapura and Galle.
Altogether it seems clear that the socio-political situation coupled with economic hardship has become the Grinch of this year’s Christmas.