Bakeries in Daqahlia were crippled Saturday due to Internet outages in the area, causing fights between bakery owners and their customers. The government-subsidized bread distribution system forces bakeries to rely on smart cards to allocate bread to the local population.
Some bakery owners gathered the smart cards from their clients and distributed bread to them without the use of smart cards, hoping to record what was distributed after the Internet connection was restored, while others refused to work until the network was back up and running.
Ibrahim Refaat Hasib, the deputy general of the government-run Division of Bakeries, said many bakeries in the county were unable to hand out bread due to the Internet outage.
"A large number of bakeries complained and we advised them to resort to manual registration of the names of citizens and register the distributed amount on smart cards later," he added.
Some bakeries stopped working completely, especially considering it was the last day of the month, Hasib pointed out.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
