(Eqtsad)- The suffering of al-Waer neighborhood in central Homs city has mounted due to lack of food and severe siege imposed by the Syrian regime for over four months.
The regime has cut off all means of livelihood available to the people of al-Waer, and all food products including bread which is considered people’s primary consumption product. Eqtsad went for a walk inside the neighborhood to find out about resident’s situations.
With the regime preventing the entrance of bread into the neighborhood since around September 2016, people began using the flour distributed to them by organizations inside the neighborhood. Most of the families in the neighborhood started mixing flour with rice to make bread. For every kilogram of flour, the families add half a kilogram of rice to save flour and increase the quantity of bread.
War traders took advantage of the siege and people’s need for flour by monopolize the flour available and increasing the prices for one kilogram of flour to reach 700 Syrian Pounds.
Most of the neighborhood’s residents are in a situation of extreme poverty due to the lack of work and are without any source income. The price of 1 kilogram of flour at the baker reached 350 Syrian Pounds. Eqtsad met with one of the neighborhood bakers and we asked him about the increase in prices.
The baker said, “I buy one kilogram of wood for 350 pounds, and one kilogram of flour requires one kilogram of wood. In this case, I only make a small profit or break even, and our work is to serve people.” In the same context, a resident by the name Abu Maher said, “I grounded chickpeas and rice today to make bread because the flour ran out in my house and I have five young children to feed.”
Most of the pleas to international organizations and aid agencies to bring food, bread, and medicine into the neighborhood have failed because of the regime’s insistence on preventing these efforts based on its famous slogan, “Hunger or Kneeling.”
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