By Umar Khan.
Tripoli, 8 November:
Tripoli Local Council (TLC) has blamed the absence of a local . . .[restrict]administration law and adequate budget funding as the reason why it and other local councils cannot deliver necessary services to the local community.
It is limiting itself to the most basic welfare works because funds have not been provided for normal operational activities by the Ministry of Finance. The money it is being given is just enough to pay staff salaries and the daily running costs, but no more.
The Head of the TLC executive committee, Adnan el-Gherwi, told the Libya Herald that it is almost unable to do any work because of the budget restrictions. “We are getting level ‘B’ type budget basically covering salaries and daily expenses. Indeed, many in the TLC are still working without salaries. We are still not allowed to start any work in the city, even from this budget.”
“The city is not running at all. We cannot do any work in the legal framework at all. We are only working as observers. We simply inform the central government of the problems. The main work revolves around the welfare, mostly. We try to help and sort out problems of the homeless and poor people,” continues Adnan, “Even if we want to do some work, the financial controller would stop us as it cannot be sanctioned because of the lack of funds.”
Adnan said that under these unique circumstances when the interim government failed to pass and implement the local governance law, there were only three ways TLC could actually get any work done.
“First way is that we send the requirement to the central government and they do it. Second is when they authorise the council to do the work and make the payment. Whilst the third way is that we appoint the contractor and get the work done in our consultancy and they only pay for it.”
“We have sent our requirements numerous times but they did not get back to us on any occasion,” continued Adnan.“The winter is just around the corner and a few things needed urgent attention. There was no other way, so I just had to go out of my way to sign the executive order to the General Services Company to start these projects immediately.”
These projects include cleaning of the Majineen valley, repairing the bridge near the Hadba area, maintenance of two roads near Jaraba Street and in Al-Arada and fixing pot-holes in different areas of Tripoli.
Even doing usual work, the council faces problems because of the lack of clear roles of the local councils, he says. “There is no money in our budget for executing any work. Even the TLC chairman refused to go ahead with these emergency projects as it will face problems over it. But I just met the director of the General Services Company and convinced him to start working. I sent him the request and he started on it. Later I just showed it to the chairman. I did it for the city because without it, during the rainy season, there will be severe traffic problems with water flowing on many roads.”
Asked about local elections, he says that the committee has not informed of any progress. “The last information we received from the committee, appointed by local NGOs, was that they have registered 90,000 voters. It is less than the third of the voters registered by the HNEC for the general elections. They are also preparing the electoral laws at the same time; I’m not sure how they will do it.” [/restrict]
