Empty fridges show impact of Lebanon’s economic crisis – The National

  • Date: 24-Jun-2020
  • Source: The National
  • Sector:Economy
  • Country:Lebanon
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Empty fridges show impact of Lebanon’s economic crisis – The National

Empty fridges show impact of Lebanon's economic crisis. Photographers capture a series of images where people just open their empty cupboards. Empty fridges in households across Lebanon have come to exemplify the country's economic crisis as the local currency has collapsed alongside purchasing power, plunging whole segments of society into poverty.. Holding her fridge door open, Fadwa Merhebi explains she already downsized once because she could not afford enough food to fill it up.. "If there were smaller fridges on the market, I would sell this one and buy a smaller one," says the 60-year-old, who lives alone in a tiny flat in Tripoli.. AFP photographers spent several days in June visiting people's homes in the main cities of Beirut, Tripoli, Byblos, Jounieh and Sidon to ask them how they managed to put food on the table.. Earlier this year, Lebanon defaulted on its debt and, while the peg to the dollar remains unchanged, the pound has since nosedived on the black market.. The crisis is sounding the death knell of a middle class that is sliding into the half of the population the World bank now estimates lives under the poverty line.. A far cry from the country's erstwhile