A shortage of gas cylinders—75% of the population relies on them for their daily household needs—has been part and parcel of Egyptian life and worsened since the outbreak of the revolution in 2011. The cylinders are difficult to find, driving people to buy them on the black market at an exorbitant price of 60 Egyptian pounds (US$10); they normally cost 7 pounds (US$1).

A shortage of gas cylinders—75% of the population relies on them for their daily household needs—has been part and parcel of Egyptian life and worsened since the outbreak of the revolution in 2011. The cylinders are difficult to find, driving people to buy them on the black market at an exorbitant price of 60 Egyptian pounds (US$10); they normally cost 7 pounds (US$1).

Accusations have been leveled against the Muslim Brotherhood of benefiting from the crisis and giving only its members and acquaintances the right to sell gas cylinders in outlets. Fayoum Governorate, 90 kilometers west of Cairo, is not an exception, where many outlet owners have complained that the Brotherhood favors its connections, while the Brotherhood has completely denied these accusations and dismissed them as individual cases.

Favoring Brotherhood’s distributers

Ahmad Salem, an outlet owner, receives 900 gas cylinders every fifteen days plus an additional weekly allocation of 200 cylinders. When he and two other colleagues went to the distribution site in the Industrial Kom Oshim Zone early March to get their additional allocation, they were shocked when the gas distribution officer refused their papers and only accepted the papers of an FJP (Freedom and Justice Party) member who eventually was the only one who got the additional allocation in the Senuris District.

“We headed to the Senuris city council to complain, but were surprised when the mayor suggested that we should coordinate with an FJP member who is a former MP from the city. We refused because he had no official status and we referred to the gas distribution official who agreed to give us our additional allocation after we demonstrated in front of his office,” Salem said.

Salem also complained that there were two Brotherhood gas distributers at the distribution site, who always accused him of selling gas cylinders at 10 pounds higher than the formal price of seven pounds. He suggested that the Brotherhood associations sold cylinders at eight pounds.

Brotherhood’s volunteers

Salem’s complaint is not unique in Fayoum Governorate. Ahmad Qadi, a resident of Shawashnah Village said there were four volunteers with no official status in the village, which is divided into four areas according to the gas distribution plan, and people would go to them to register their names in lists prepared for this purpose and then each volunteer would hand- in these lists to the Supply Department officials to provide the needed number of gas cylinders. “At least two volunteers are Muslim brothers and they are familiar to the villagers. People think that those Muslim brothers are the ones who provide the gas cylinders rather than the supply department,” Qadi added.

Ali Hijazi, a lawyer in the village, confirmed what Qadi said, suggesting that distributing gas cylinders, especially among simple people with poor education, showed as if it had been the Brotherhood which provided them with gas and solved the crisis, which would benefit it in the elections.

In Itsa too

This politicization of gas distributing is also taking place in Itsa District in Fayoum Governorate, which is stressed by Walid Abu Saree’, coordinator of the people’s committees in Itsa, who said: “The Brotherhood dominates gas distribution in Itsa villages due to good organization, presence in all villages and licensing charities and civil organizations to use them in gas distribution. Gas cylinders are often sold 4 pounds higher than their official price and the difference goes to the Brotherhood and sometimes to support the markets FJP establishes during the elections to support it.”

On the fence

Ibrahim Ismail, General Director of Supply in Fayoum Governorate, denied cancelling the additional 200-cylinder weekly allocations and said he took additional allocations from the Young Graduates Project and delivered them to the local unit to be distributed under the supervision of the mayor. He however admitted that the Brotherhood dominated the distribution of gas cylinders in Senuris. “I held a special meeting to discuss this matter and stopped all of that. That one person has certain tendencies does not mean that the whole directorate is like that. I am not affiliated with any party and I am closely observing the issue in the directorate because it is not appropriate and I will not allow exploiting the directorate for electoral and political purposes by any political party,” he added.

Politicizing civil organizations

The Brotherhood’s relationship with the gas cylinders issue takes many shapes. Fourteen members of the people’s committees, seven of whom are brothers, in the village of Dafno decided to establish a charity after the January 25^th revolution to serve the villagers. “We agreed that the charity activities should be philanthropic and distant from politics, and we applied this approach for two years after the revolution. We got our allocations from Kom Oshim outlet and distributed them to the villagers,” said Jamal Shaban, head of the people’s committee in Dafno and the charity treasurer, adding that “We collected the names of those who wanted to subscribe and prepared a database to register them according to the ration card so that each subscriber would get only his/her specified allocation and we registered married people according to their marriage documents.”

However, says Shaban, a disagreement arose among the charity’s board of directors when some members ascribed the charity activities to the Brotherhood rather than to the charity itself. “People started saying that it was the Brotherhood which provided the gas cylinders. I did not care that much about it but things developed to only making decisions approved by the Brotherhood. Upon that, I decided to withdraw from the charity,” he added.

We help people

For his part, Yahya Saad, member of the FJP General Secretariat in Fayoum, stressed that the issue was not politicized, saying: “The most important thing for us is to solve the problem of gas cylinders. We are facing a societal crisis and people lay most of the blame on the major parties and expect them to solve it. Political parties try to provide services for people to solve their problems in order to alleviate their anger, especially with the many crises they experience.”

As for the bias of some officials in the Governorate in favor of FJP, when it comes to distributing gas cylinders, Saad said: “Civil society organizations are entitled to offer their services to officials and contribute to solving the problem and when officials refuse to cooperate with our party, they should be held accountable.” He called upon all parties to be involved in solving the people’s problems.

The gas cylinder crisis will remain a source of political tension until it is finally settled.