Selling food to meet cost of living in city

By Alphonse Porau
The only way to meet the cost of living in Port Moresby is for someone to be part of the informal sector, an informal business operator says.
Rachel Waut, from East New Britain, told The National that selling food items has been a help in meeting household needs.
She said many self-employed women have been able support their husbands through informal business activities.
“Many women who are self-employed are looking for opportunities to sell food in public places to assist in household needs, like paying for water and power bills, food, bus fare and lunch for school children,” Waut said.
“We are not working for money but as housewives, we support our husband’s fortnight to meet the expenses in the city.
“Sometimes husbands do not really assist so when we do food sales like this, it helps us support our families.”
She set up her “shop” opposite the Central Government Office at Waigani along with other women on week days and sells aigir or rice and stew for K10 and drinks for K3.
She says sitting every day to sell pays off and also helps others doing business in shops and markets.
“We earn almost K500 to K1000 daily just by selling cooked food and drinks and we spend around K200 on food at the markets and shops again to cook and sell,” she said.
“So when you see it, we are also contributing to the informal sector and business in the country. Buying food here helps us and we also help the ones at the markets who travel far to come and sell including the shops.”
Wuat believes a lot of PNG citizens like to support local businesses by seeing the customers coming from everywhere in the city to buy food there because it is fresh.
She hope that one day the government would see how businesses are progressing and support her and her colleagues selling items along the streets and provide a proper place to conduct business.
“The Government or the National Capital District should really look at these kind of businesses we are doing here and build good stalls or shops for us,” Wuat said.
“We not only sell for our consumption but we are also engaged to a bank so when we get our profits we bank them, we are building something on the ground level.”