Parliamentary proposal to replace the ration card with cash

Shafaq News/ MP of "Sairoun" coalition, Ghayeb Al-Amiri, announced on Saturday the adoption of a proposal of allocating funds to replace the ration card after the successive governments failed to secure their supplies.

Al-Amiri said in a press conference held today, addressing the Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, "the provisions of Article 61 of the Constitution stipulate that the Council of Representatives shall have jurisdiction over the performance of the executive authority and you have formed a committee to combat corruption. However, we did not see that this committee moves against corrupts in the file of the ration card file that successive governments have failed to secure. This requires direct intervention to secure food security for the poor, this is what you promised in the government program".

He called for, "urgent measures and concrete steps at specific dates to address the failures in this file", saying, "We suggest converting the ration into cash amounts equal to the costs of this share in the general budget to avoid corruption that marred the stages of complexity and processing, and hand them over its components within a deliberate approach to not be exploited by the corrupts".

Iraq has followed a system of distributing food rations to Iraqis since the 1990s when the blockade was imposed on it after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, under the oil-for-food program.

Since 2003, residents have been complaining about the poor quality of the materials and their non or delayed distribution in some months due to the widespread corruption in the country.