By Farah Waleed.
Tripoli, 17 April 2013:
The Ministry of Interior’s LD 3-billion budget allocation is insufficient for its needs, according to the . . .[restrict]Minister, Ashour Shuwail.
Speaking at a joint press conference with the Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, and Justice Minister Salah Marghani, Shuwail said that it was barely enough to pay salaries, and certainly not enough to cover the cost of new police vehicles, let alone uniforms and equipment.
He pointed out that that the Ministry had so far incorporated about 51,000 members of the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) into its forces. This was an important stage towards building security in Libya, he said.
Six thousand had completed training to join the police force, he explained, and the Ministry was waiting for the rest of them who are still training.
French and British specialists would be brought in to help with training the new police forces in Libya, he added today.
“As long as there are widespread weapons, there are problems. We hope to deal with these problems by attracting the former revolutionaries with training opportunities and opening up several areas such as education as well as providing them with the chance to become involved in small and large ventures.”
In regards to this, he said that the Ministry of Interior was working in cooperation with the Warriors Affairs Commission, which was itself was striving to integrate the revolutionaries as a first step towards disarming them and replacing weapons with skills that can reconstruct the country. [/restrict]
