The population of Guinea-Bissau has been left without bread since Tuesday

The population of Guinea-Bissau has been left virtually without bread since Tuesday, when they expected to buy the commodity cheaper as government cuts took effect to reduce the cost of living in the African country.

Traditional bakery ovens, which bake the most consumed product by the population, the so-called kuduro bread, were not working, and industrial bakeries were unable to respond to the increase in demand.

The government and representatives of the bakers’ association are talking about a “boycott” and warning that the agreement to reduce the prices of bread and flour must be implemented, threatening anyone who does not heed with fines.

The measure to reduce the price of bread from 200 (0.30 euros) to 150 CFA francs (0.22 euros) and flour from 29,000 (44 euros) per 50 kg bag to 24,600 (37 euros) was adopted on September 12 in Council of Ministers will come into force on September 24.

In connection with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of independence and the holiday on Monday, the impact of this measure became visible only now when the president of the Association of Consumers of Goods and Services of Guinea-Bissau (ACOBES) Bambo Sagna spoke at the “Boycott that surprised everyone.”

“There is no bread in Bissau,” he told Lusa Fátima Sagna, who was waiting at the Casa do Pão in the Belem district, sitting with other women, hoping they would get lucky with the second batch that was about to come out.

He got up “early in the morning, at dawn” to “get bread”, but at the end of the morning he had not achieved his goal and was unable to obtain the raw materials for the sandwiches that he sells and which are the family’s livelihood.

“How will I eat? I don’t know,” he continues, wondering “what action the government will take,” because people cannot remain in this state, “in this repentance.”

Pedro Cobde Nhanque, in charge of Casa do Pão, attributes the lack of products to a “bakers’ strike” who oppose price cuts, which he believes only benefits the population since “it means that everyone has access to purchase.”

In this establishment you can buy bread for 75 (0.11 euros) and 100 CFA francs (0.15 euros), and it was one of the few places where you could buy this product, as Julio Cerno Embana emphasized.

He has been waiting for bread since five in the morning and complains that there needs to be more places where he can buy so-called machine-made bread.

“Kuduro bread reaches everyone, but unfortunately, since they (the bakers) are on strike, the population does not have it. What is happening is machine-made bread, which many people do not have,” he notes.

But even in places with machine-made bread, the wait was the same: people leaned against empty counters, waiting for the drip delivery of the next batch.

Edilsa Costa waited and managed to bring bread to solve the “problem with snacks at home and for the children at school.”

The vice-president of the Association of Traditional Bakers of Guinea-Bissau, Mamadou Camara, assures Lusa that the organization did not call for any strike, and attributes the strike to “small groups” who are trying to “change the order of the government,” which he considers “illegal.”

The leader points out that there were “bakers who did not work because there was no flour on the market”, but assures that on Tuesday “it already began to arrive at the port of Bissau”, which will allow “activities to resume” from today.

The vice president also urges “all members to respect this agreement as it is a government decision” and asks anyone who is in doubt or sees profits affected to contact the association as “there is a right of appeal.”

The strike in the bread sector surprised Trade Minister João Handem Júnior, who, he told Lusa, held an “emergency meeting” with the bakers’ association on the 24th.

According to the official, at first they said that there were difficulties because firewood was very expensive, then the group decided to go on strike, although they did not receive flour from the importer, then it was middlemen, wholesalers.

“I started to see that it was a mess, so I just told them what the law says: Anyone who can prove that they have flour in a bakery and are not making bread will have their license revoked and their flour confiscated. intermediaries. If they don’t give us an explanation why they didn’t distribute the flour, the same thing will happen to them,” he said.

The official explained that “traditional bakeries in Guinea-Bissau are dominated by foreign nationals, especially from neighboring Guinea-Conakry.”

“They are clearly challenging the state of Guinea-Bissau, we don’t know for what reasons,” he said.

The minister understands there is “a bit of ignorance” in the reaction, as he believes the bakers “have not understood what the compensation promised in the agreement is.”

According to him, “the difference between the previous and current prices will be compensated by money or flour.”

He added that “160 containers of flour are being unloaded in Bissau under the new bread cost structure,” which will be distributed by bakers.

“Naturally, everything will return to normal,” he said, believing that “the situation will become easier,” although he admits that it is still impossible to say when it will be resolved.