Zimbabwe: No Flour Available Food Crisis Deepens as Bakery Closes

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Zimbabwe: Lobels Bread, which is Zimbabwe’s largest bakery, will close its doors soon. The bakery is running out of flour and new supplies are not readily available.

The country is already experiencing severe food shortages and the bakery’s closure well only make matters worse.

General Secretary Leonard Kuzodishaya of the Federation for Food Workers union said that “if the bread maker closed its doors this would be catastrophic for the country as well as the workers.”

At present, Lobels only has a two day supply of flour and when that is gone, there will be no option but shutting down. Lobels operations manager, Lemmy Chikomo, said that company “has used up its flour reserves and cut back production to 40,000 loaves a day from 200,000 three months ago.”

Both flour and wheat have been in short supply for some time now, but this situation was made worse by the price controls which were imposed in July. The price of bread is officially set at Z$30,000 (US$0.12) but bakers say they must charge $73,000 to remain

Canada has announced that it will donate C$3.5 million (US$3.3 million) in food aid to Zimbabwe. A World Food Program (WFP) Country Representative Kevin Farrell said that the WFP would provide food to some 1.1 million Zimbabweans by the end of this year.

To date, the WFP has received $70 million from donors, unfortunately that total is US$118 million short of what it required to meet current and projected needs.