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By Motaz Ahmed.
Benghazi, 27 April 2014:
Benghazi Joint Security Room (BJSR) has announced plans to clamp down on individuals living illegally in . . .[restrict]public amenities and unfinished and abandoned buildings.
BJSR Spokesman Ibrahim Al-Sharaa told the Libya Herald that security forces had already evicted a number of individuals residing in a transformer station in Ben Younis. He said the raid took place yesterday at the request of the National Grid Director in Benghazi, Abdu Solam Makluf Ali, on the grounds that the squatters where impeding maintenance work.
The station distributes electricity to the city’s Ben Younis and Salmani districts including to Galaa Hospital one of Benghazi’s three most important medical facilitates.
Sharaa said BJSR would act “firmly” over the next few days to deal with those who had seized buildings and spaces illegally.
Squatting, driven by increases in land prices since the revolution, has become ever more common in Benghazi, particularly in largescale building projects left unfinished after the revolution.
Meanwhile, security forces under the direction of the BJSR have recently begun a clampdown on the proliferation of drugs, alcohol and weapons in Benghazi. On Monday members of Benghazi’s army and police force raided the city’s infamous Suq Jinihin in an attempt to stamp out the trade of drugs, weapons and alcohol there. One day later a similar operation was mounted on an abandoned museum in Kish district, well-known to locals as a storehouse feeding the city’s black market in weapons, ammunition and controlled substances. [/restrict]
