JEDDAH, 26 March 2008 — Following the recent flour crisis, the Jeddah Municipality has reassured consumers that its market monitors are on the lookout for flour pinchers. In the last few weeks inspectors have visited 108 bakeries and found 58 of them were shortchanging customers on the amount of bread they were buying.
The government controls the weight and price of bread, and bakeries cannot legally reduce the weight or increase the price of this important basic commodity.
A municipal official told Arab News yesterday that inspectors are stepping up spot checks to ensure that the bread being sold in the market in the standard bags weigh no less than 510 grams. “If any bakery is found selling a one-riyal bag of bread that is less than the specified weight, it will be fined immediately,” said Mahmoud Kinsarah, deputy mayor in charge of markets and foodstuff regulations.
Abdul Hakeem Ahmad, a Yemeni manager of a bakery in Jeddah’s Al-Faisaliah district, said that the recent flour shortage in the region led to bakers finding ways to adjust. “This led many bakeries to reduce the size of the loaf of bread in order to prevent losses,” he said.
But Prince Mishal, the governor of Jeddah, rejects this argument and has ordered a crackdown on skimpy bags of bread. The inspectors are also checking to ensure bakeries stick to clean-burning natural gas in their ovens rather than switching to dirtier diesel to save money.
Kinsarah also said that the flour shortages are coming under control — with government officials tightening the screws on price gougers. But, he added, “some bakeries have taken advantage of the previous situation and have tried to permanently decrease the amount of bread.”
Tarik Zakaria, manager of Al-Barakah Bakery, said that there’s still a shortage of whole-wheat flour, affecting the price of brown bread. “We hardly break even with brown bread,” said Zakaria. “We hope the authorities will provide us with more brown flour because we can’t make a profit without reducing the size.”
