Bad roads hurt the poor

 Bad roads hurt the poor the most

(November, 27) CONGO DRC
The absence of roads hurt the poor people the most. Bridges have deteriorated and have become impassable, isolating many communities. The simplest way to measure the hard caused by bad infrastructure is to look at how prices change as you move away from the big cities. All products for example, less than 100 km down the road in small villages, prices rise by 25%. Once you leave the 'main' road, along the steep muddy tracks, prices rise sharply. In village that can only reached by 4x4, and for the villages only on foot, the prices double. At the same time, the food that the poor have to sell - yams, cassava, fruit - fetch less in the villages than they do in the towns. Farmers are doubly squeezes by bad roads. They pay more for what they buy, and receive less for what they sell. Small wonder that we find a strong link between poverty and remoteness. We go to the remote people who need our help. That's just the work we do. The most vulnerable people are found only where the roads are the worst.