Policemen in Khartoum accused of selling cooking gas

Policemen reportedly assaulted activists and their families protesting fraud in the sale of cooking gas in Soba in Khartoum this week. They have been accused of selling gas themselves.

Resistance committees in the neighbourhoods of Soba district in south-east Khartoum have accused the police of assaulting a number of their members, after they objected to an increase in the price of a refilled cooking gas cylinder from SDG 200* to 250 SDG.

The activists said in a statement on Thursday that the police refused to investigate reports against cooking gas vendors in Soba.

They further accused the police of firing tear gas to disperse the people waiting in lines in front of the stores to buy cooking gas, without regard to children, women, and the elderly.

According to the statement, the police transferred the available cooking gas cylinders to the police station, and began selling them by themselves.

The resistance committees called on the government to protect them from police attacks, and to hold them responsible for “disturbances in the provision of basic commodities”.

Shortages of cooking gas reappeared in Sudan last month. Radio Dabanga reported on April 21 that social distancing as a precaution against the spread of the coronavirus in Khartoum and Port Sudan came under pressure because of the long queues in front of bakeries, selling points of cooking gas, and fuel stations, due to shortage of the commodities.

* USD 1 = SDG 55.1375 at the time of posting. As effective foreign exchange rates can vary in Sudan, Radio Dabanga bases all SDG currency conversions on the daily middle US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS). In mid-April, the US Dollar traded SDG 147 on the black market in Khartoum.”

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