Hard times caused by job loss­es and COVID-19 have caused many fam­i­lies to scale back on their Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions to­day.

Apart from abysmal deya sales, the prices of pro­duce sky­rock­et­ed, prompt­ing some peo­ple to cut back on the ar­ray of East In­di­an dish­es that they usu­al­ly cook at Di­vali time.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, deya re­tail­er Chan­ny Sookraj-Boodram said she spent $12,000 on deyas, wicks, oil and oth­er goods to re­sell but has yet to make back her cap­i­tal in­vest­ment or a prof­it.

“If I sell $200 for the day, its plen­ty. To make mat­ters worse, I got robbed of $300 a few days ago,” she said.

Wip­ing away tears, Sookraj-Boodram said the rob­bers have left her scarred. Not­ing she had been robbed twice, she said, “It re­al­ly hard to be out from 5 am and lose every­thing. I work­ing hard to make an hon­est dol­lar. Why oth­er peo­ple can't do the same?” she said.

Sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice show a re­cent up­surge in rob­beries in the South­ern Di­vi­sion. From just 10 for the month of Au­gust, it rose to 32 for the month of Sep­tem­ber.

An up­set Sookraj-Boodram said a man who begs near her stall walks away with more mon­ey than her. She said the cheap­er, small­er deyas which she sold for $7 had sold out but she still had 10,000 medi­um-sized deyas which are be­ing sold for $10 a dozen. The largest deyas were sold for $20. 

Low­er down the SS Erin Road, a re­tail­er sold small deyas for $8 a dozen.

“The cheap­er deyas are def­i­nite­ly sell­ing for less,” he said. 

The usu­al pre-Di­vali rush seen at re­tail­er out­lets in Debe and Pe­nal was ab­sent this year. 

Some cus­tomers said they shopped around for the bet­ter price.

Cindy De­o­dath, of Clax­ton Bay, said, “We heard that deyas in Debe was sell­ing cheap­er than any­where else so we came to buy.”

She said they had scaled down on the cel­e­bra­tions this year, light­ing less deyas.

Sook­daye Poorans­ingh al­so said many peo­ple were not or­der­ing del­i­ca­cies as they used to do in years gone by.

“Peo­ple are try­ing to save as much mon­ey as they are mak­ing their own sweets,” Poorans­ingh said.

Dhan­raj Chat­ter­goon, who was seen buy­ing deyas, said the job loss­es had left many fam­i­lies fac­ing an un­cer­tain fu­ture. 

“Judg­ing by the en­vi­ron­ment, every­thing is slow. You don’t know what is go­ing to hap­pen next so every­one is liv­ing on a day to day ba­sis and we don’t know how it is go­ing to af­fect us. Yes, we know the econ­o­my is bad and we now have health, that is al­so an is­sue now,” Chat­ter­goon said. 

Even the prices of some pro­duce sold much more ex­pen­sive when com­pared to last week. Toma­toes sold for $20 a pound while gin­ger sold for $16 a pound this week. Two weeks ago, toma­toes were $12-15 a pound and gin­ger at $10 a pound. 

How­ev­er, some mar­ket ven­dors said they had been forced to cut down their prices be­cause of poor sales.

Madan Ram­jeawan said he sold chatagne at $20 for one pound, com­pared to $25 last year.

“Things hard so we tried to help by sell­ing the low­est price,” he said.

Drake Ali said many peo­ple had lost their jobs but he still wished every­one a hap­py Di­vali de­spite their eco­nom­ic con­straints.