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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Think $4 gas is bad? Haitians paying almost $6 per gallon
Skyrocketing gas prices are all over the news in the U.S. as Americans fume each time they go to the pump and the price seems to have leaped another fifty cents.
Impoverished Haiti is feeling the pain, too, but drivers here pay the equivalent of about $5.75 U.S. a gallon, up by almost double in the past year.
While oxcarts are still prevalent in the countryside and the vast majority of Haiti’s nine million residents are so poor they can barely afford food, much less a car, Port-au-Prince’s streets are still packed with choking traffic.
“Everybody in Haiti is complaining about high gas prices,” said Lesley Jean Baptiste, 42, who drives a bus between the capital and the provinces. “We had to raise our ticket prices and it’s so bad we’re losing passengers, but there’s nothing we can do.”
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