Ordinary Norwegian consumers aren’t the only ones starting to revolt against high and rising prices at the grocery store. Inmates at the high-security prison in Skien have filed a formal complaint with state competition authorities, after the prison’s only kiosk boosted prices as well.
“Punishment should be the restriction on our freedom, not to take both food and human dignity away from people,” the prisoners’ representative, Jens Sverre Nystein, told local newspaper Varden.
The prisoners are served dinner every day but claim there’s demand for more and varied food every day, which they then must buy. They claim they depend on the lone kiosk within the prison because they have no place else to shop, but were upset when prices went up recently. They want the authorities to provide for more retail competition within the prison with the hope of bringing prices back down.
“Skien is a high-security prison (with more restrictions than other Norwegian prisons) and those of use sitting here have no other opportunities to buy what we need apart from using the store here,” Nystein wrote in the letter.
The prisoners’ complaints come just as other Norwegians also have complained about the prospect of even higher food prices in Norway because the government has caved in to demands from farmers for higher tariffs on imported goods. Norway already has the highest import duties on food in the world, to protect its agricultural industry from foreign competition.
newsinenglish.no staff
