CAIRO: “We will soon kill and steal from each other for bread. Where is the country going? asked Howeida, a middle-aged mother of three who cleans houses for a living.
She recently gave her 10-year-old daughter LE 2 to buy bread from a nearby bakery and hours later, the girl came back sobbing and empty-handed. After standing in line for three hours, the young girl left the bread on the sidewalk for a second to pay the baker and when she looked back, her bread was gone.
“I never want to stand in that line again, she told her mother. This is only one story in many “bread queue casualties.
The controversial bread subsidies issue is again making headlines in the local press as reports of the government’s efforts to tackle the ongoing situation are juxtaposed with citizens’ pleas and complaints.
On Tuesday, citizens were once again shocked by changes to the subsidiary system. Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper published a front page article claiming that the Ministry of Social Solidarity “secretly lifted subsidies off the fino (artisan) bread, a move that will go into effect next month.
The ministry allegedly sent notifications to all governorates and mills informing them of the decision, and the newspaper published a copy of the decree that was sent. The move is expected to save the government LE 1 billion – the amount allocated to subsidizing bread – and decrease the amount of flour that ends up in the black market.
Several bakeries in Cairo had not heard of the new decision but told Daily News Egypt that if they do get orders to use the 82 percent flour instead of the subsidized 72 percent flour, the price of the fino bread will definitely increase to compensate for the higher cost.
According to the newspaper, bakeries in other governorates have already started applying the new system without complaints. Sohag, Qena, Aswan and Qalubiyya are the only governorates that threatened to increase the price of fino bread.
The Ministry of Social Solidarity refused to comment on the issue.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif held a ministerial meeting on Sunday with the Ministers of Finance, Interior, Trade and Industry, Social Solidarity and Administrative Development to discuss the “bread queue crisis, which has recently reemerged.
The aim of their meeting was to come up with strict regulations and procedures to tackle the problem of long queues at bakeries and complaints of the deteriorating quality of bread.
One thing the ministers agreed on was that subsidized flour distributed to bakeries by the Ministry of Social Solidarity is enough to provide high-quality – as well as adequate quantities – of subsidized bread. This led them to the conclusion that the subsidized flour is either used inefficiently or is not reaching the targeted beneficiaries.
The Ministry of Interior said that one million tons of subsidized flour were reported “missing in the Greater Cairo area alone.
The ministerial meeting concluded that stricter regulations within each governorate will be applied to ensure that the subsidized flour reaches the intended bakeries. Officials from the Ministry of Interior will be sent to monitor these bakeries.
According to the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s press office, Nazif gave the ministry strict orders to speed up work on a plan to separate flour production and distribution entities, as well as to map out the most important distribution points that are currently unattended to. These measures are meant to facilitate the distribution of subsidized flour.
“We are currently working on this plan, but it will take time, the press office said. While this is not the first time the ministry has set these guidelines, this time they are “taking it more seriously and will accelerate its implementation; which leaves people wondering whether the government will succeed this time.
Howeida said that the “bread queues crisis is inevitable. She insists that the rise in commodity prices and poverty will eventually lead to an increasing crime rate.
Some analysts agree. “In our job we deal with a lot of field research and our studies do prove that crime rates are definitely increasing as a result of poverty, Sherif Mansour of Prime Securities told Daily News Egypt.
“The bread issue has become as common as the flu, he said, “we take the antibiotic for a while but it always comes back.
