By Libya Herald reporter.
Malta, 16 February 2015:
The National ID Number Authority is continuing to implement ID numbers to state-sector employees across the sectors, the Tripoli-based pro-GNC LANA Libyan state news agency has reported.
The news comes on the back of statements by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) and the Audit Bureau denying that state-salaries will be delayed, contrary to circulating rumours.
The National ID Card Authority reported that its employees were continuing in the detailed process of cross-checking the separate sector data-bases with the National ID Number database in order to eliminate duplications in salaries and identify individuals obtaining more than one salary from the state.
Furthermore, it reported sources at the National ID Number Authority as saying that the Authority has been able of late to recover and refund to state coffers LD 3.6 million obtained by citizens through the LD 2,000 family allowance scheme.
It will be recalled that the Audit Bureau, Libya’s monitoring and oversight body, had insisted in January that all state-sector salaries for the month of February should only be disbursed through the use of the National ID Number.
There have been a number of unsuccessful calls in the last four post Revolution years by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL), the GNC, and the HoR for the implementation of the National ID Number in the disbursement of state-sector salaries. However, there has been no success in its implementation due to the weak post-revolutionary government and state institutions.
However, Libya’s internal political, military and economic situation, with its diminished oil production and exports and the collapse in international crude oil prices – the country finds itself in dire straits economically.
For the first time in over four decades, the Libyan state is struggling to meet its basic outgoings of state salaries and subsidies, forcing it to take on austerity and cost cutting measures. Implementing the National ID Number is one of the cost-cutting and anti-corruption measures.
It is not clear weather all the Libyan bureaucracies involved in salary payments will succeed in preparing all state-sector employee databases with the National ID Numbers in time for the disbursement of salaries by the end of February. They will be under immense political pressure not to delay the payment of salaries, especially in the emotive month of February, where they do not want salaries to be delayed – a practice associated with the Qaddafi regime.
However, it can be noted that for the first time the various bureaucracies on the face of it seem to be seriously intending to implement the ID Number.
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