By Daiaphira Kharsati
SHILLONG: With the onset of winter, braving the adverse weather, there are women, mostly single mothers, who engage in selling warm clothes to eke out a living in parts of city , but they are facing various hardships currently compared to the past when the business was good.
Gone are the days when the market for second hand warm clothes used to do brisk business for a lot of women who earn a living through selling these clothes at Iewduh ( Bara Bazaar), but as the situation took a different turn , as the same women are now complaining of fewer customers.
Some sellers operating at Iewduh are unaware of the reasons as to the downward trend in the sale, as only a few highlighted the fall out due to the ban of coal and sand mining.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, sellers complained of dull business, and the most affected lot is the single mothers.
A single mother said, “There is no choice, this work is not going to sustain me and my child, and I am working because I am eager to educate my child. There are many needs but these cannot be met because of financial constraints.”
According to her, she is surviving on God’s provision, as “earlier I earned Rs 300 per day but nowadays not even one Rs 100 is earned daily. People like us are getting poorer”.
As the vendors start their business at 8 am or 9 am, there are some customers who come for shopping at these hours.
Most of the vendors at Iewduh operate on a commission basis and rely on an agent who brings the clothes. They are paid 1/10 of the price of the clothes by the agent, “For a jacket worth Rs 100 , we get a commission of Rs10 and for Rs 50, we get Rs 5.”, a vendor said.
However, they do not know where the agents get the clothes from.
Other than single mothers, women working alongside their husbands also narrated the sorry state of their financial position.
Most of them said that they have engaged themselves in the business to bring (Contd on P-10)