CAIRO: Clashes between Burg El-Borollos citizens and security forces over flour rations ended on Saturday, but the public’s rage in the northern coastal town continues to simmer.
Thousands of rioters flooded El-Borollos streets, sealing off the International Road in Kafr El-Sheikh – a prominent trade route that links other governorates and neighboring countries to Kafr El-Sheikh – for at least seven hours.
The protestors burned tires to stop the traffic on the road; in return, police used teargas and batons to disperse the crowds. According to Al-Ahram newspaper, 30 protestors were arrested and several were hospitalized after inhaling teargas.
An AFP report put the number of arrests at 72, according to a security official.
Eye witnesses claim that this number is minimal compared to the true number of arrests and injuries sustained.
Hamdeen El-Sabahi, an opposition MP for Kafr El-Sheikh, told Daily News Egypt that 87 people were arrested and 51 security officers were injured during the riots.
However, he explained that he was in a meeting late Saturday night with the governor discussing ways to contain the situation and they reached an agreement to increase the supply of flour available to residents in the area and to subsidize the product.
People can now buy flour from the bakeries at LE 2 per kilo, 75 piasters of which is subsidized by the government.
The riots erupted after Kafr El-Sheikh Governor Ahmed Zaki Abdeen announced that flour rations were not to be directly distributed to citizens.
Instead, he said, they would be distributed to bakeries so more bread can be produced.
“The decision to end direct distribution of flour was implemented in all governorates and it passed smoothly, Kafr El-Sheikh was the only governorate left, Magdy Rady, spokesman for the Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s office told Daily News Egypt.
Before this decision was made, subsidized flour was one of the basic goods distributed to citizens at subsidized prices, with citizens receiving their share from specialized outlets with their ration cards. They would then use the flour to bake their own bread.
However, the government argues that outlet managers sold the subsidized flour on the black market, wasting a substantial amount of the highly demanded commodity. The contentious decision to remove flour from the list of subsidized products in the Burullus area caused outrage among residents.
As a result, all governorates passed a new law that allows citizens to receive bread from bakeries to minimize black market dealings. “It is a better way to allocate bread and flour, Rady said.
However, Kafr El-Sheikh citizens believe they are different than those living in other governorates. With a population of around 70,000 fishermen, many of Kafr El-Sheikh’s citizens were left jobless after a law was passed two months ago banning fishing in Mediterranean waters.
“We have no income and were dependant on the flour we bake at home, with this new law, every citizen gets two loaves of bread for his family, which is not enough, frustrated callers told Orbit TV’s “Al-Qahira Al-Youm Saturday night.
In the nightly talk show, Abdeen rebuffed reports that suggested there were thousands of protestors, saying only that “they were a bunch of kids and we dealt with them.
He also said – rather bluntly – that his job requires a lot of hard work and is “one of the dirtiest jobs ever.
As a result, prominent National Democratic Party MP Mostafa El-Sallab, phoned into the program, urging the government to “deal with this irresponsible governor who is a foul image to all government officials.
Regarding the decision and what the governor said in the television program, MP El-Sabahi said, “He [the governor] is new and he should have studied the area of Kafr El-Sheikh better before taking this decision. Most of the residents are fisherman and they need to take flour on their long trips out to sea to bake their daily bread themselves.
Although the riots have ended, the people’s frustration can still be felt in Kafr El-Sheihk.
“People here have been suppressed for a long time and the government is not paying attention to us. The fishermen are jobless, the farmers have issues with fertilizers, last year we had a water crisis – what are they [the government] waiting for [in order for them to act]? Reda El-Essawy, a land owner in Kafr El-Sheikh, told Daily News Egypt.
In light of the global food crisis that has burdened nearly half the Egyptian population with unaffordable commodity prices, Minister of Social Solidarity Ali Moselhi announced that citizens with ration cards will be able to use them starting July 1.
For the past two months, the ministry has been taking vigorous measures to expand the ration card system to cover about 55 million citizens. In April and May alone, an extra 17 million people were added to the ranks of ration card holders.
The ministry also boasted that with the new system, families who were not allowed to add their children to the ration cards were now allowed to add close relatives. Since 1988, ration card privileges were only extended to the holder and not to family members.
The amount of food distributed with every ration card will also increase.
Rice, oil and flour portions will be doubled, since now the “family ration card serves up to four household members.
