Standing at the roadside in the Sheikh Saad area, a 10-year-old girl named Rahef, residing in Mazzeh Jabal, holds five bundles of bread in her hand. As you pass by, she greets you with the phrase, "Do you want bread?" She sells bread to fellow citizens to secure her livelihood.
Rahef is not the only case; the list goes on. She is part of the phenomenon of selling bread on the black market, which is widespread alongside bakeries in the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs.
Rahef told "Dama Platform" that she gets five bundles daily from the bakery at a price of 3000 Syrian pounds per bundle. She sells them to citizens for 5000 or sometimes 6000, depending on whether her grandmother, who manages the business, is present. It seems that practitioners in the field differ in their pricing!
However, this is normal. If the distribution schedules of bread bundles are subject to the whims of the bakeries, which are supposed to be organized and agreed upon according to consumer protection instructions, then there is no blame on a popular network selling the bundle at the price that suits them and meets their needs.
Noha (a pseudonym) mentioned that the Sheikh Saad bakery does not always sell her bread because her card is excluded from support, and the bakery does not have allocations for that category. She is forced to buy the bundle for 8000 Syrian pounds from one of the vendors in front of her store, where she sells shoes.
There are families with surplus allocations based on their supported cards. Sometimes a family can take four bundles a day if it consists of several members, especially families with young children who do not eat bread. They sell the surplus to those wanderers at different prices, and the vendors, in turn, set prices "each one as they please."
Since "neighbors help each other," the phenomenon of a delegate who collects the cards of his relatives and acquaintances and brings their allocations, which they may not need, seems to be thriving, exploiting the situation to sell those bundles.
The economic and living conditions of this population, exhausted by years of crisis, seem to have driven them to trade even in their daily bread to meet other needs.
Many questions arise about this phenomenon. Has the ministry indeed implemented a dedicated program for cards excluded from support, or is this subject to the whims of the bakeries and those residing on them? And why does the phenomenon of mobile bread vendors continue alongside bakeries, despite the ongoing crackdowns and campaigns by the ministry to combat this phenomenon?
