Bakery association laments challenges amid virus crisis

AMMAN — While many view the Kingdom’s bakery sector as one of the businesses that thrived during the coronavirus pandemic, Bakery Owners Association President Abdul Ilah Hamawi voiced the challenges faced by the industry. 

In a phone interview with The Jordan Times on Monday, Hamawi said that the operations of bakeries entail high costs that require working at full capacity round the clock in order to generate profits, or else businesses suffer from losses.

“Since the onset of the pandemic, we have worked hard to manage time productively, in the time when lockdowns and the government’s changing decisions impacted bakeries work,” according to Hamawi who added that bakeries’ energy bills have increased as a result of changing working hours as per the governmental regulations.

“It costs a lot to run a machine,” he noted.

Hamawi also noted that the Kingdom’s bakery industry is in need of foreign workers, as many Jordanians refrain from working in jobs that are physically demanding.

“The culture of shame is another reason why citizens did not want to work in bakeries, but after the pandemic everything started to change,” he said.

As the pandemic has taken a toll on thousands of Jordanians’ jobs and livelihoods, there is a slight shift in the attitudes of Jordanians.

“Jordanians who did not want to work in the bakery industry or in any other job that requires physical labour, started to accept them more,” Hammawi said.

 According to a Labour Ministry statement sent to The Jordan Times, Minister of Labour and Minister of State for Investment Affairs Maen Qatamin on Monday met with a group of bakery owners to listen to their demands and discuss the challenges faced by the bakery sector, particularly during the pandemic.

In the statement, Qatamin said that a mechanism would be put in place to recruit foreign workers as well as increase Jordanian employment in the sector.