In Khartoum .. revolutionary teams guarding bread to fight corruption

As bakers knead flour-flouring clothes and enter trays loaded with loaves of dough furnaces in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, a group of volunteers in yellow jackets perform guard duties.

The volunteers - who called themselves the guards of the revolution that toppled President Omar Hassan al-Bashir - aim to tackle the phenomenon of flour smuggling (flour) and subsidized bread that are supposed to end up in the hands of citizens who are suffering from a severe economic crisis.

The bread was a symbol of the revolution, as an attempt to raise prices was a catalyst for the exit of the first major protests in the city of Atbara.

But flour and fuel are still withdrawn and put back on the black market, leading to a shortage that has reduced morale after six months of a transition period of 39 months and left the weak civilian government in a state of inability to respond.

Student Muhannad Babiker, guarding a bakery in the suburb of Arquette in the capital, said, "We play our role in bakeries as resistance committees that are limited to supervision ... We monitor the things that enter the bakery and go out ... the flour before it is bread and after it is bread and the number of bread that goes out and at what time it goes And why? "

Babiker stated that the volunteers had already seized wheat or bread while they were running away from bakeries in Arquette. In one case, more than 2,000 loaves were offered for sale three times their price outside Khartoum. The perpetrators received a police warning.

A second volunteer said that bread is sometimes sold to restaurants, an increase of 20%.

Over the past two weeks, volunteers have entered data of flour shipments, bakery closing times and smuggling operations on a pilot application in Arquette.

They hope to expand their activities to include mills and distribution networks, and that the application will help them in detecting where smuggling occurs and diverting supply routes.

"I think the fuel and bread crisis will be resolved when the correct data is available," said Mohamed Nimer, 31, a software engineer who designed the application.

The volunteers, who work alternately, are chosen from "resistance committees" linked to the movement that mobilized street demonstrations for months before and after al-Bashir stepped down in April and after.

Sleeping on flour bags
While the recent supply crunch has led to long lines over the past few weeks for fuel and bread, volunteers have spread to bakeries across and outside Khartoum.

Minister of Trade and Industry Madani Abbas Madani, responsible for setting the bread policy and a prominent figure in the anti-Bashir movement, publicly thanked the resistance committees for their work, and posted pictures on Twitter of the volunteers, one of whom appeared asleep on the bags of flour. The ministry and the committees also said they would try to unify their efforts.

The government revised the decision to raise the price of bread, but Madani announced last week that the number of commercial bakeries in which bread can be sold at a higher price will be increased starting in April, and that the size of the fully subsidized loaf of bread sold at one pound (two US dollars at the official price or one cent) (Parallel market) will decrease from seventy grams to between 42 and 48 grams.

In a bakery in the Riyadh suburb of Khartoum, some customers waved the smaller loaves, expressing disappointment that their size had decreased. The owner of the bakery, Hisham Sharafi, said that the bakers face the high costs and the declining supplies of flour, and that the ministry should have set a larger size for the loaf.

He also said, "The citizen who stands in a queue and sees this loaf says he is small. It is better to pay one and a half pounds to a large loaf. This is more credible."

The hints that the subsidies could be raised have angered some, but opinions are divided.

"In my personal opinion, if the government raised the subsidy, it would be preferable for the defunct era to come," said Salah Ibrahim, 55, as he was buying loaves of bread from Arquette.