By Libya Herald reporters.
Tobruk/Tripoli, 19 May 2015:
A group of army protestors who had blockaded the entrance to the regional military headquarters . . .[restrict]in Tobruk, claiming their had not been paid for nearly a year, today stopped their action after being promised that they would be given a month’s backpay immediately and the rest in instalments.
The protestors, who started the blockade last Thursday and had threatened to go on strike, are part of a fourth batch of some 1,200 soldiers who had been trained for the post-revolution Libyan army. They started their training in Tobruk in 2013 and graduated in February last year. “Since then, we’ve not had any salary from the army”, one of the protestors said on condition of anonymity.
Most of the 1,200 have been working in Tobruk and the surrounding area in various military institutions and, according to another protestor, never stopped working despite the lack of payment. They had met officials from the Libyan army chief of staff to discus the problem but they still did not get paid, the protestor claimed.
He said that what prompted them to take action was the discovery that the group of soldiers who graduated after them had been paid. [/restrict]