News
High prices and flu fear dampen festive spirit
View(s):By Akash Widanapathirana and Shelton Hettiarachchi
The National New Year this year appeared to be a lacklustre affair in comparison to last year, with traders complaining about reduced sales due to rising prices while holiday destinations saw lesser crowds due to excessive heat and the fear of contacting influenza. Most traders we spoke to said sales were low this Avurudu season when compared to last year and attributed the drop to rising prices and declining disposable income of the people.
Vegetable traders complained people who bought vegetables in kilos were now buying them only in grams. Pix by Indika Handuwala
Nuwara Eliya which draws the highest number of holidaymakers during the National New Year season also witnessed a drop in visitors, compared to previous years. City officials said they believed that many people avoided visiting the most popular holiday destination because of the fear of catching the influenza that had taken the lives of a dozen people in the district in the past three weeks. Holiday house owners said that in previous years, rooms and houses were snapped up even before the season began, but this time around the demand was not high.
However, hotelliers said there was no decline in foreign tourists visiting Nuwara Eliya, known as ‘Little England’. Hot temperatures with high humidity were also one of the reasons why local holidaymakers avoided dry-zone destinations during the New Year season, which coincides with school holidays. To attract the crowd, many star-class hotels in hotter climes offered discounts upto 30 percent for credit card holders.
Pettah vendors were an unhappy lot this Avurudu season because they could not sell the stocks they bought hoping a sales boom.
Sampath Amaraweera who sells bed sheets and cloth items in Pettah says he believes the sales were low this season because the people do not have enough money in hand to spend. He said he sold only one or two bed sheets a day during the days prior to the New Year and he was forced to sell his curtain clothing at a low price, keeping only a small profit margin. “I bought curtain material for Rs 130 a metre from wholesale shops and sold it for Rs 150 a metre. When transport costs are deducted, I virtually gain nothing from the sale of curtains,” Mr. Amaraweera, who comes from Matara, said.
T.G. Jayasinghe said he had been in the retail grocery business in the Pettah for the past six years, but this year was the worst in terms of sales. Attributing the drop in business to the hike in prices of most commodities, he said his sales had plummeted to 50 percent when compared to last year. Only the prices of big onions dropped this Avurudu season. “I expected to sell the onions and potatoes I had in stock before the avurudu but I don’t think I could do. People who usually bought 3-4 kg now buy only 500-750 grams,” he told us on Wednesday, a day before he closed his shop for the National New Year.
Vegetable traders also said the people who bought vegetables in kilos were now buying them only in grams. “We brought 40kg of carrot today but were able to sell only 5-6 kg out of it,” one vegetable seller told us on Wednesday.
In Pettah we met Sudarshana Ranasinghe from Kolonnawa. He had come to buy some goods for the Avurudu, hoping that the prices in Pettah would be lower than in other markets.
But he said he was disappointed because the prices were equally high in the Pettah market also. Nayana Shiromi, working at a cleaning company in Colombo, said she received her salary on Tuesday and she had only one day to buy a few things for the Avurudu. She said that with her meagre salary she would only buy a few essentials. “If I spend my salary on buying clothes, I will have to starve the whole month,” she said.
Meanwhile, the authorities came in for rare praise for putting in place a better transport service this New Year season.Chandra Malini was waiting for the 12.30 p.m. bus to Elpitiya at the SLTB bus stand in Pettah. She said there were no long queses like last year, because there were plenty of buses and they were not crowded either.
Sri Lanka Transport Board Chairman Ramal Siriwardena said the Avurudu special bus service was successful. He said more buses would be deployed from today for people to return to Colombo from their hometowns. Traffic Police Chief Palitha Fernando said a special operation was put in place to crack down on drunk driving with 100,000 breathalizer test kits being distributed to police stations islandwide.