The Surinamese bus system is a private system. This man owns his own bus.
He works at least 10 hours a day, but usually he only makes two trips a day. The rest of the time he is waiting around in the parking lot. The simple fact is there are too many bus drivers.
The prices for bus tickets had risen again and people couldn’t afford to pay for it anymore. Gas prices have gone up, too.
No money for farmers and fishers
A woman who sells fish. (Anne van Mill/YJI)
This is the central market of Paramaribo. In March, half of it was empty.
People working there complained about the risks of planting and selling their own food.
They don’t want to raise their prices, but they have no other option to keep it profitable.
The woman in the photo sells fish on the market.
It’s a risk for her and other people in agriculture and fisheries, as the government doesn’t support them at all. Their income is what they sell on a daily basis.
If, for instance, due to a big flood, the harvest fails or if something’s wrong with the load of fish, they have a really big personal problem and nobody around to help them out.
Kids at the worksite
Girls dance on the street in Paramaribo, Suriname. (Anne van Mill/YJI)
For these two young girls, dancing in the streets of Paramaribo is the favorite thing to do.
They dance after they finish school for the day and during the weekends, too.
Their mothers work nearby, on the corner of the street selling food. Nobody has money for daycare, so lots of children spend their afternoons with their parents at their jobs.
This picture below of a boy eating ice cream in front of his father’s shop tells the same story as the one before.
A boy at his father’s workplace. (Anne van Mill/YJI)
Historic buildings falling apart
The image below is a really common sight in Paramaribo. A poorly maintained, very old building next to a perfectly fine one.
The old building is historic and part of the cultural heritage, and repairs must meet certain standards.
Unfortunately, neither private companies nor the state have the money to do that.
Anne van Mill/YJI
Unfinished home in Suriname. (Anne van Mill/YJI)
These houses in the photo above were probably never finished. It is most likely that private companies started building them, but in the meantime the prices got so high that the clients couldn’t pay for it anymore.
That’s why the city of Paramaribo is full of unfinished projects.
Protests
Protesters in Suriname. (Anne van Mill/YJI)
During the protests on the 17th of February, 2023, the police failed to keep order.
Despite the threats of the situation getting out of hand, there weren’t enough police officers on the streets which resulted in the protesters ruining lots of shops, petrol stations and even the biggest political building, The Assemblee.
The protest shown in the photo happened a month later. The protest, which asked for a total shutdown, was called “Everything Flat.”
Everyone was scared of what could happen and in the end, the city turned into a ghost town for an entire day. There were more reporters and military in the city than protestors.
A small group of protesters showed up at the ‘Everything Flat’ protest on the 24th of March.
They yelled things to the police like: “Why are you standing there blocking our way to the political building when you can also stand at our side?”
To me, a white reporter, they yelled: “Why can she be on the good side of the fence while we stay behind bars?”
The writing on the umbrella says, “Our Children are hungry.”
It’s a sad message, but unfortunately is – or is about to be – the truth, for the poorer Surinamese population.
Anne van Mill is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
Source link : https://youthjournalism.org/with-an-economy-in-distress-suriname-faces-political-turmoil/
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Publish date : 2023-05-26 03:00:00
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