Dateline video journalist Sherine Salama is in Cairo, where hundreds of hungry Egyptians are queuing at a bakery, desperate to buy bread. Trouble is, the price of wheat on world markets has doubled in the past year – making the price of bread beyond the reach of Egypt’s poor.
The crowd – many of whom have been waiting since before dawn – are restless and jumpy, ready to fight for the last loaf. The bakery workers serve behind steel bars, such is the mood of the crowd.
The Egyptian government has expanded its scheme to provide subsidized wheat to bakeries. Problem is, more and more Egyptians are flocking to subsidized bakeries in order to feed their families – and there’s not enough to go round.
Last month, Egypt’s president ordered thousands of military bakeries into action to help ease the shortage, but that hasn’t stopped staples like rice, pasta and lentils rising beyond the means of ordinary Egyptians.
An organization calling itself Citizens Against Price Rises is taking part in demos, blaming the crisis on greedy corporations and the Egyptian government. In at least one demo there were clashes with security forces
“It was necessary for people to take a stand,” Egyptian journalist Mahmud Al-Asqalani tells Salama. “I personally feel that there is an explosion just waiting to happen that the government is unaware of, and I can say without a doubt that this upcoming explosion, no political analyst can predict how powerful it will be, nor how big an effect it will have on the country.”
About International Dateline
SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.
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