Health during the Holy MonthRamadhan goods are often poor quality [Archives:2003/681/Community]

Yasser Mohammed Al-Mayyasi
Yemen is one of the countries in the Islamic world where Muslims receive the holy month of Ramadhan with great delight and acclaimation, exclaiming God as great.
Yemenis if compared to other Arabs, have their own traditions and norms in the way they receive the holy month of Ramadhan. This of course differs from one city to another.
Yemenis, either in villages or those in cities, go shopping for basic necessities for the holy month.
Despite of the low individual income and his purchasing power, Yemenis have been overwhelmed by great pleasure to go to markets.
Ramadhan in Yemen is a big seasonal trade occasion where so many merchants and traders make profitable trade businesses. Markets are filled with so many different products such as, foodstuffs, dates, dairy products, and canned products.
But economists interested in conducting market researches and studies related to the local consumers expect that markets during Ramadhan are flooding with different kinds of goods and commodities which don’t conform to the proper health conditions.
Due to the lack of awareness among most of the Yemenis, most of those flooded goods and commodities are actually expired products and don’t have proper health qualities .
Yemenis, either in cities or villages go shopping for buying goods and foodstuffs, spices, sweats, drinks, dates, and incenses.
In some of the rural areas, gas lamps and lanterns have been still used by villagers. Some of the remote areas have been deprived from electricity for a long time, while in some villages, electrical generators are used for lighting houses.

Seasonal trade occasion
In cities, exhibitions for goods and commodities necessary for Holy Month are held annually.
Some of those exhibitions are usually held under the pretext of giving low prices of those goods during Ramadhan. But, this has been done with reactivating the traders’ commercial activities at the expense of good morals.
In addition to this, some shop owners used to spread heaps of their goods in front of their shops for selling their goods.
This has been done with a view of enlarging their sales in different places and therefore, prices of those goods are also high.
Yemeni markets nowadays have witnessed a high attendance of local consumers. But, there are some goods which have low prices and this sometimes can be ascribed to poor quality.
Different imported products have been flooding to our markets. What is needed is to monitor those markets and this of course is very important for maintaining health among the public.
Despite monitoring and control procedures of our markets, there have been infringements and fraud in some of the markets. This manifests itself clearly through the lack of proper health awareness on the part of some Yemenis and also lack of proper monitoring procedures in those markets.
There are also high increases of prices during Ramadhan.
Most Yemeni villagers don’t pay due attention to Ramadhan’s eating table because most of them still depend on animals such as, goats, cows and chickens.
——
[archive-e:681-v:13-y:2003-d:2003-10-30-p:community]