‘Food stores played vital role in invasion’

KUWAIT CITY, Aug 2, (KUNA): A number of specialists in the food security sector have agreed that food storages played a major role during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, affirming that those long seven months had given Kuwaitis a wide experience in dealing with any food related emergency.

In an interview with Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), former director of the Union of Consumer Cooperative Societies, Dr. Saad Al-Shabo, recalled the sacrifices made by food merchants and workers in the cooperative field from all segments of Kuwaiti society to maintain food stocks throughout the invasion period from August 2, 1990 until Kuwait’s victory and liberation on February 26, 1991.

Al-Shabo gave examples of food companies that had provided cooperative societies with various types of food, such as dairy production companies, that gave Kuwaiti volunteers full confidence in loading and transporting their products, to be launched daily to all supermarkets through their trucks, to reach consumers eventually.

He pointed out that food factories and necessary goods such as meat, poultry, canned food, grains, vegetables, sugar, rice, cleaning materials, diapers, tissues and some tools continued to provide their goods in ways that kept stocks from running out, which helped the Kuwaiti people in resisting invaders.

Al-Shabo described each cooperative society in residential areas as a “minigovernment” for its area, and it was a meeting point for the people of that area to know the latest developments, nutrition needs, consumables and services. He pointed out that it was managed by Kuwaitis hands that sacrificed for the sake of perpetuating life in the occupied country.

He said that the Kuwaitis, since the early days of the invasion, had shown the most wonderful forms of giving, as merchants opened their food stores to citizens and residents to take what they need for free. Moreover, they had coordinated with the supervisors to transfer some materials to secret warehouses so that they would not fall into the hands of the invaders.

Al-Shabo affirmed that the invasion helped Kuwaitis to improve their expertise in the food security sector, and in managing and exporting nutritional goods when all ways of exporting went down during the worldwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic that struck the world in the past two years, in which Kuwait has not faced any shortages in food, consumables and medical supplies.

On his part, Al-Yasra Foods Company Director Habeeb Baqer affirmed that food and consumer companies played a pivotal role in helping Kuwaitis face the Iraqi invasion, despite all the oppression that the workers suffered in this field.

Baqer, who had worked in the cooperative sector back then, said that private sector companies succeeded in achieving food security for the Kuwaitis who never left their lands through planned cooperation with the cooperative societies, despite the theft by Iraqi forces of huge quantities of stocks, in addition to the stock in the ports.