By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 12 May 2015:
Although there have been no power cuts in Tripoli since Thursday, there will be more so . . .[restrict]long as fighting continues in the west of the country, the electricity minister in the Tripoli-based “government”, El Nureddin Ali Salem, has warned,
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Salem blamed the clashes for the problems the General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL) has been having in keeping the lights on for residents and the airconditioning working in Tripoli, the Jebel Nafousa and southern Libya.
GECOL has already said that instability and clashes was preventing its workers from maintaining and repairing lines. According to Salem, after a brief respite list month, the resumption of clashes in western Libya on 23 April damaged distribution lines and power plants. Until the fighting ended, there would inevitably be more outages.
On top of that, he said, his “government” did not have the funds to pay for all the necessary repairs.
In addition, Salem added, a power plant in Misrata is currently offline due to technical problems, further reducing the GECOL’s capacity.
With the hot season and Ramadan fast approaching, Salem warned that if the fighting did not end residents could soon find themselves experiencing outages far more crippling than the 12-hour daily power cuts they had already experienced. [/restrict]
