Tabassum Charity Bakery: 650 Families in Need Receive Bread Daily

The Tabassum (2) charity bakery distributes bread to more than 300 needy families in Kabul daily. According to Hazara Foundation officials, Tabassum (2) is the foundation’s second charity bakery in Kabul. The foundation’s officials said that if the assistance continues, the number of these bakeries will increase and, a chain of bakeries will be established in various parts of Kabul.

The Tabassum (2) charity bakery opened in western Kabul on Thursday.

“For 35 days now, Tabassum Bakery (1) has been operating, distributing dry bread to 320 needy and homeless families daily,” Abdullah Hemmati, the general director of the Hazara Foundation in Afghanistan, told Hasht-e Subh. “In Tabassum Bakery (2), about 330 families are to be covered daily.”

On this account, two bakeries distribute bread to 650 households in need on a daily basis.

Hemmati asked the representative of the districts and the local people to cooperate with the Hazara Foundation’s survey board in identifying the people in need. He added that poverty and misery left families in despair and anxiety, and families are trying to get help by any means.

“We are seeing the most naked face of a humanitarian catastrophe taking place in western Kabul due to the current staggering poverty,” said Mohammad Ali, a member of the Hazara Foundation’s survey board. He identifies families in need in the western parts of Kabul and closely observes the living conditions of the residents of Kabul. He has painful tales of poverty and hunger. According to Mohammad Ali, the concern of the vast majority of people in western Kabul is “bread.”

“In the far west of Kabul, there are countless families who do not have bread for daily consumptions and may sit on empty tables and dream of ‘bread’ in this bitter winter cold,” he added. “One day, we went to survey the livelihood of a family on the slopes of Chehel Dokhtaran Mountain. I witnessed that a family of eight lived in a damp, humble rented house. The family was cared for by an elderly woman who was unable to stand due to kidney surgery. Their only source of income was a carpet board, which was woven by the calloused hands of the two daughters of the family, and the suffering of the family members was interpreted in its fabric.”

The individuals and families covered by this project are mainly homeless, abused, and overcrowded families.

“I pay 1,500 afghanis a month in rent and, I have no income,” said Sayed Hussain, a resident of Ghor province and head of a family of seven who currently lives in a slum west of Kabul. “Of all the humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, my share is only seven loaves of bread that I receive daily from Tabassum Bakery.”

“I take eight loaves of bread a day from the bakery of Tabassum (2) and spend the same eight loaves of bread day and night,” said Sharifa Mowahid (a pseudonym), whose husband is addicted to drugs. She added that just as no one hears the cries of the poor and people in need, their deaths are silent. According to her, God knows how many poor and destitute people die every day from the severity of hunger; But no one knows about their deaths.

Another woman received a card and bread from the Hazara Foundation. She lives in the “Kata-bolandi” area in the west of Kabul and heads a family of eight. She described the process of the survey and the identification of the needy by the Hazara Foundation’s survey board as transparent, saying that only poor and needy families received the card.

The majority of those who attended the inauguration of Tabassum Bakery (2) complained about the distribution of humanitarian aid by national and international organizations in Afghanistan, saying that there was no justice in aid distribution and that it becomes entirely a matter of taste for certain ethnic and regional groups. They called on aid agencies to monitor the distribution of their aid and to prevent abuses.

The Tabassum Charity Bakery in Kabul assists people at a time when, according to the World Food Program, about 90 percent of Afghans do not have access to adequate food.