Dear Editor,
I write in reference to my letter `Stabroek News’ Cost-of-Living series signal contribution on Guyana’s socioeconomic landscape was what it meant for working class households’ in yesterday’s edition of Stabroek News.
A Mr. Rajendra Rampersaud (MSc. Economics) wrote to me asking what formula I used to estimate cost in hours of labour, and then I realised I had reported the wrong figures in column three of the table (corrected version below). I used a simple accounting for the items, then doing the arithmetic. Readers can plug in their own numbers. The average exchange rate is, of course, the official figure.
So: the (monthly) formula is:
Cost in hours = Cost of stewEst. employment income/hr = Cost of stewEst.income/mth28 days x 8 hrs
Nothing has changed otherwise; same mid-point total income of G$80,000, but converted to income per hour. The essential conclusion stays unchanged: the estimates do indicate that the average low-income worker needs to work for more hours/day to earn an hourly income to afford the meal. Obviously, if every able-bodied adult in the household is working, things become easier, but this is a moot point.
Mr Rampersaud is an observant and questioning reader. I hope he’s representative of the general reading public, especially in these times.