Walaa Mahdi, a resident of a Cairo neighborhood, is among the hundreds of thousands of people across the country who have found their government ration cards suddenly suspended this summer.
The smart card normally gives her and her family access to a basket of household essentials at state-subsidized prices: they get sugar, rice and oil via the card, as well as a daily quota of subsidized loaves.
When her card was suspended, she went to the local supply office to check its status. There, she discovered that her card was suspended on the grounds that her youngest son is enrolled in a private high school.
Mahdi was shocked by the suspension. The school is not a luxury for her son, but a hard-won investment their family is making in his education. They will pay the annual fee in installments, and her son is working alongside his studies to pay for the education. “How can this mean I am ‘underserving’ of support?” she wonders, speaking to Mada Masr.
Mahdi is not alone. She is one of at least 850,000 people the state has expelled from the subsidy program since June in a campaign it is pitching as “purifying operations” to rid the subsidy database of “undeserving” beneficiaries to improve the targeting of government resources.
Amid an outcry over the mass expulsions from citizens and their representatives in parliament, the Supply and Internal Trade Ministry has announced that families can appeal their cards’ suspension. The minister himself appeared on television last week to say that the appeals could be submitted at post offices, local supply offices and via the Digital Egypt platform for grievances, boasting the accuracy of the ministry’s ‘purification’ process by noting that only 2,600 appeals had been submitted so far.
But many of the families, as well as people working to support families’ appeal submissions, tell Mada Masr that even though they believe the expulsions have taken place in error, they have been unable to submit an appeal. They described the process as arduous, complex and bureaucratic.
As they and other families are suddenly pushed outside the support system, their exclusion has sparked concern that the government’s drive to purge “the undeserving” from the database will push households on the brink of coping further into economic difficulty and out of the scope of state protection.
Mahdi’s complaint is similar to that of Selim*, another Cairo resident who spoke to Mada Masr.
In his case, before the recent campaign, not all of his family were registered on the ration card, and for those who were registered, only some were entitled to receive general food subsidies, while others were only entitled only to receive a daily ration of subsidized bread.
Selim said that his card was suspended in recent weeks on the grounds that one of his sons was enrolled in a private school.
But while the government’s list of criteria says that families will be expelled if they pay school fees over LE20,000 per year, the fees for the private school his family member is enrolled in are no more than LE9,800 per year.
Enrolment of one or more children at a private or international school was among one of several criteria for suspending ration cards that the prime minister confirmed during a press conference in July. Other criteria include owning a “modern” car, residing at an upscale residential compound, owning a registered company and having a registered electricity consumption offense or receiving a government pension.
Ahmed, another resident speaking to Mada Masr, described finding his ration card suspended under the car ownership criteria, even though they sold their car years ago. Many on social media describe finding they have been disqualified for registered electricity offenses, even though they have been acquitted of those charges.
Mada Masr spoke with two people who have come across dozens of these cases. They work to provide digital and administrative services to residents in their local area for a fee, such as supporting families to file grievances, complete digital services like updating data or issuing birth certificates.
One of these service-providers in Sohag, Zain al-Abideen, explained that a majority of the people who have approached him about their ration card suspensions in recent weeks have been disqualified because of the private school enrollment criterion.
He also confirmed that while there are many complainants, only a few of them have got as far as submitting the formal appeal …