There has nev­er been a more ap­pro­pri­ate time for the Gov­ern­ment to move with a sense of ur­gency to en­sure there are func­tion­ing en­ti­ties to over­see food prices in this coun­try and, more im­por­tant­ly, with the pow­er to take de­ci­sive and puni­tive ac­tion against un­scrupu­lous busi­ness­es en­gag­ing in price goug­ing.

On Thurs­day, less than 24 hours af­ter an in­crease in flour prices from the Na­tion­al Flour Mills took ef­fect, some busi­ness­es had al­ready marked up the price of an­oth­er com­pa­ny's flour on their shelves, al­though those prices have not in­creased yet, while oth­ers re­port­ed­ly seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hike up prices of oth­er food prod­ucts.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon al­so not­ed that in the last few weeks, there had been as much as a 40-60 per cent in­crease in food items, par­tic­u­lar­ly sta­ple foods which low­er-in­come fam­i­lies heav­i­ly de­pend on.

Not­ing that the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion had no­ticed large dif­fer­ences in the prices some re­tail­ers had in­creased flour, Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon deemed this type of be­hav­iour as "un­ac­cept­able."

The Min­is­ter added, "I can tell you who they are, but I’m not yet ready to name and shame...and I have the names, but let’s give them a few days and we can talk about this again.”

How­ev­er, she al­so made a strong ap­peal to their con­science, ask­ing them to do the right thing.

When it comes to in­creas­ing food prices and the strain it is putting on the pock­ets of cit­i­zens and even their over­all well-be­ing, how­ev­er, the time for ap­peal­ing is over.

Last year, when the Gov­ern­ment re­moved Val­ue Added Tax on ba­sic food items, the Min­is­ter al­so made a sim­i­lar ap­peal and promised to "name and shame" those who en­gaged in price goug­ing, as she as­sured the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion would be mon­i­tor­ing su­per­mar­kets to en­sure com­pli­ance.

De­spite that in­ter­ven­tion on con­sumers' be­half, months lat­er, they find them­selves in a wors­en­ing squeeze, mag­ni­fied by food short­ages cre­at­ed by the Ukraine/Rus­sia war.

But noth­ing has changed, ex­cept the out­cry from the cit­i­zen­ry.

There has been talk about the Fair Trade Com­mis­sion's pow­er and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in mon­i­tor­ing price goug­ing and tak­ing ac­tion. But af­ter months of ex­ploita­tive price hikes by busi­ness­es, the pop­u­la­tion is yet to see any ac­tion from the com­mis­sion.

Such or­gan­i­sa­tions can no longer con­tin­ue to op­er­ate like prover­bial 'tooth­less bull­dogs' and sit idly by while cit­i­zens strug­gle to feed their fam­i­lies. It is al­so no longer ac­cept­able for those in au­thor­i­ty to say we can­not go back to price con­trols in Trinidad and To­ba­go — some­thing must be done.

Over a decade ago, the then-pres­i­dent of the Prices Coun­cil, Wendy Lee Yuen, be­moaned the lack of checks and bal­ances to deal with high food prices from lo­cal re­tail­ers. In 2022, the is­sue per­sists and has be­come far more dis­tress­ing.

While the Gov­ern­ment will no doubt search for a way to bring re­lief to cit­i­zens im­pact­ed by food prices, con­crete ac­tion must be tak­en to pre­vent un­scrupu­lous re­tail­ers from, as is said in lo­cal par­lance, "dig­ging out peo­ple eye."

Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon has promised to come back to the pop­u­la­tion with a so­lu­tion in two weeks. We hope when she does, if some sort of leg­isla­tive ac­tion is re­quired, all those in the Par­lia­ment will sup­port the mea­sure.