Flour shortage: Bakery owners arrested in Sudan

The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS security arrested 30 owners of bakeries in the densely populated Ombadda neighbourhood in Sudan’s second city of Omdurman under the pretext of non-work.

The city is in the grip of a flour and bread shortage that has spread across Sudan. The Omdurman bakers complain that they were forced to close their bakeries as the quantities of flour supplied to them have been exhausted.

Flour shortage

As flour becomes increasingly scarce, most parts of Sudan are experiencing a bread crisis, in particular El Gedaref, Kassala, River Nile state, Khartoum, South Kordofan, and West and East Darfur.

On Thursday, most of the bakeries in El Gedaref closed because of lack of flour. Several people from El Gedaref town told Radio Dabanga that they had spent many hours in the past two days searching for bread in various districts to no avail.

Khartoum

Since Wednesday, residents of Khartoum have been complaining about a severe bread crisis.  Arif Najmeldin, head of the National Flour Chamber, attributed the problems of bread in the past days to non-arrival of flour quantities that have been set by the Ministry of Finance for the bakeries, “amounting to 43,000 [100 kg] sacks a day”.