By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli and Tunis, 14 July 2016:
Sebha has had enough. For the second day running protestors have taken to the streets to damn the lack of power. In the last 24 hours the town has received not a single watt of electricity. The clatter of generators marks out those who can afford the emergency technology. For the majority of citizens it has been another miserable day as temperatures soared.
Life in the town is already disfigured by criminal violence which has seen a surge the number of kidnappings and robberies. Therefore the townsfolk were in no mood to put up with the total loss of power. They took to the streets and set up burning barricades of tyres.
The state electricity company GECOL has not yet provided an explanation for the extensive outage. Sebha has two power stations, North and South. In the past, there had been problems with both fuel supplies maintenance.
However, in the town today there were those who claimed that local power production was fine, but was being diverted to Tripoli, where the supply system has become so bad that many homes and businesses are receiving only one hour’s electricity a day. GECOL has denied that it is prioritising power distribution on a political basis. It was not possible to contact GECOL to clarify the reasons for Sebha’s total power outage.
