By Libya Herald reporter.
Misrata, 19 December 2016:
Flights resumed to Labraq airport today when baggage handlers there and at Tobruk airport stopped their strike over unpaid salaries following promises from the Beida-based administration that they would be paid.
Interim prime minster Abdullah Al-Thinni has ordered that LD13 million be allocated for the handlers’ back salaries.
They have not been paid for a year.
In Misrata, though, the handlers are still refusing to go back to work. They are sick of promises, they say, and will not return until the back pay is in their bank accounts. They are taking the stand, they explain, because they have been told that the instruction from Presidency Council deputy head Ahmed Maetig to the acting finance minister to pay the back salaries is now being blocked by the Central Bank of Libya.
If that is the case, it may yet trigger fresh industrial action at Mitiga.
In the case of Labraq and Tobruk, it is reported that Thinni has managed to secure a loan from unnamed sources to pay the baggage handers.