By Saber Ayyub and Ajnadin Mustafa.
Tripoli, 7 November 2015:
Continued overnight rain in Tripoli has again brought further misery to Tawerghan refugees . . .[restrict]camped out in the capital’s Falah district.
After two days of rain, the sun came out again today in the capital, but for the hundreds of Tawerghans forced to live in shanty-town conditions in the camp near the Airport Road, morning revealed the full extent of the latest assault on the temporary housing they have had to call home for the past four years – flooded buildings, sodden furnishings, sewage backing up and spewing onto the roads and into the housing.
Flooding has become an annual event for them. Two days of rain last December saw homes in the Falah camp flooded out and it was the same miserable story the previous year.
For ordinary Tripolitans already having to cope with soaring food prices the rain has added to their despair, although yesterday, with major road blocked by flooding, most of the capital’s residents opted to stay at home. Inevitably many blamed the floods on officialdom. Some blamed former mayor of Tripoli Al-Mahdi Al-Harathi for the poor state of the city’s drains, others blamed the Tripoli government of Khalifa Ghwell. Yet others simply blamed the revolution.
“People don’t know who to blame anymore,” one government official suggested.
Ironically, for the Tawerghans, the wretchedness of the flooding in Falah comes amid hope of a breakthrough in negotiations with Misrata that would allow them to escape their wretchedness in Tripoli and return home.
In the past two weeks, Misrata and Tawergha have been holding further reconciliation talks in in both Tunis and Geneva. These, according to a statement by the UN Special Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), focussed on preparing a detailed roadmap on reparations, transitional justice and reconstruction issues.
The Joint Misrata-Tawergha Dialogue Committee met in Geneva from 1 – 5 November, having previous met in Tunis from 20-31 October.
According to UNSMIL, the Joint Committee will to meet again in December “with a view of reaching agreement on an overall roadmap” for the return of internally displaced Tawerghans to Misrata.
