By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 13 January 2014:
The Minister of Housing and Utilities Ali Sherief said that his Ministry has had to . . .[restrict]deal with important matters over the year, including compensation for war-damaged buildings, housing and urban planning projects and housing bottlenecks.
The Minister was speaking last Wednesday (8th January) during the Zeidan government’s annual roundup press conference.
Sherief said that his department has signed contracts to deal with overcrowding and urban planning. Through a central committee it had reviewed over 40,000 housing units totaling in value LD 1.88 billion . We have achieved more than 50 per cent, he concluded.
With regards to payments, these will start to be made and assessments will take place and the balance of payment will be made, with more or less payments to be follow according to the final phase.
On the issue of the bottlenecks specific to local councils and cities, the procedure, Minister Sherief explained, was that local councils would present their bottlenecks and costed proposals. Based on that process, 610 contracts were arrived at for roads and water projects with 380 contracts activated with a value of LD 234 million .
For urgent water supply needs the Ministry has signed 54 contracts for a value of LD 58 million across all the country. For normal water supply work it has signed 134 contracts totaling LD 430 million. Subject to the availability of finance, Libyan citizens will note the effect of these projects, the Minister added.
With regards to housing and utilities projects, these took the longest to activate due to the large number of Libyan contractors, Sherief explained. These involved 30,000 housing units with 131 contracts for infrastructure, some of which are completion projects and some are newly activated projects.
On the issue of compensation, the Minister was brief, saying that “compensation will take time”.
In concluding, Minister Sherief said that many projects had started all over Libya. The ministry had also started newly planned projects within the urban plan as a form of its contribution to hastening real estate development. It had also made an agreement with Gumhuriya bank in support of these agreements and for the financing of the rest of the projects that the ministry is on the verge of executing, he explained.
In view of the fact that during the week of this press conference the government was subject to a vote of no-confidence by the GNC, and this was a defence of the government’s record since coming to office, the Minister however, did not take any questions at the end of the press conference to allow for scrutiny of his record. [/restrict]
