While some peo­ple are out­raged that sev­er­al ven­dors have in­creased the price of their dou­bles to $6, the CEO of Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket says it should be $10.

His com­ments come af­ter Has­sanali’s Green Shed in Debe in­creased the price of dou­bles from $5 to $6. A spokesman for Has­sanali's re­fused to ex­plain the price hike.

But cit­ing the ris­ing cost of raw ma­te­r­i­al, Ma­haraj said the cost of chick­en in­creased, but peo­ple were not com­plain­ing about the hike in the price of Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en.

Speak­ing on the Aakash Vani Morn­ing Pan­chay­at this morn­ing, Ma­haraj ex­plained that COVID-19 caused is­sues for in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers of chan­na, lambs, goats and oth­er items. As a re­sult, the cost of im­port­ing goods al­so went up, lead­ing to in­creas­es at su­per­mar­kets and eater­ies.

Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket is the dis­trib­u­tor of Cow Brand Gee in Trinidad and To­ba­go and usu­al­ly, around this time, they would have about 20 con­tain­ers of the prod­uct. But be­cause of sup­ply is­sues, they are with­out. He said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, sup­pli­ers, grow­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers have slashed staff, in some cas­es, by 50 per cent.

An­oth­er is­sue, al­so re­port­ed glob­al­ly, was the un­avail­abil­i­ty of ship­ping con­tain­ers and car­go ships. It means an or­der for par­tic­u­lar items can take be­tween three to six months to ar­rived in T&T. Usu­al­ly, im­porters would pay be­tween US$2000-US$2500 for a con­tain­er from Mi­a­mi, but Ma­haraj said it is now a min­i­mum of $12,000.

“So at the end of the day when you add up all of that, why are peo­ple com­plain­ing about a dol­lar. Dou­bles should be $10. When they have to get up 2 o’clock in the morn­ing, these poor peo­ple and them to make a liv­ing. You know chick­en gone up, no­body talks about Ken­tucky gone up,” Ma­haraj said.