Most workers in Accra eat once a day, according to a recent study by the Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO).
This, the reports says, is due to current high cost of living in the country marked by the constant rise in the prices of good and services.
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Workers in informal employment, who account for 89 percent of all employed people in Ghana and 83 percent in Accra, are disproportionately affected by the country’s cost of living crisis.
These workers who work six days per week earn below the average monthly living wage of GHS2,922 and have to pay for increasing prices of rent, utilities, school feeds for their children and food.
They therefore have resorted to cutting down on the number of times they eat in a day.
A female street vendor puts it this way “We are unable to feed the household like we are expected to…. The price for utilities, rent, food have increased, so we are unable to afford three square meals. So we resort to either once or twice a day. The kids eat twice a day, while we adults eat once a day.”
Others say they have had to let go off protein on their meals just to cope with the situation.
“Before, you could get satisfactory food for GH¢ 2 but now GH¢ 10 can’t even get you satisfied. These days when I go and buy food and they ask me how much meat I will buy I get surprised because protein is not my problem. I want to be satisfied, so I don’t think about meat because I can’t afford it. Today I only have GH¢ 15 to spend and this morning I have already spent GH¢ 5 on porridge,” a female head potter “kayayo” narrated.
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This is very disturbing because food was the most important expense in workers’ households with most households spending more than half their income on food, the report found.
