By Libya Herald reporter.
Tripoli, 1 March 2017:
The Central Bank of Libya (CBL) in Tripoli and its parallel entity in Beida exchanged accusations today over a strike by a number of employees in Tripoli which resulted in the arrest of two of them.
The Beida CBL has condemned the arrest of the two bank staff and demanded they be released. It claimed that they had detained after they had gone on strike today demanding the governor, Saddek Elkaber, be sacked. “He was essentially fired by the House of Representatives (HoR) in October 2014 but decided to continue in office by using the policy of fait accompli,” it comlained.
The CBL in Tripoli has denied the reports.
“We deny categorically all lies, defamations circulated by some media outlets that a strike has been done by some employees and that the bank’s administration has terminated it by force,” it stated on its Facebook page.
The lies, its said, were intended to undermine the bank and “sow discord and division within our country”.
A source at the CBL in Tripoli, however, has said that the strike did take place and was in response to the sacking of two IT staff.
“The governor sacked the IT department manager, Mohamed Al-Bahri, and a member of the IT department, Hashem Belaied. In response, IT staff went on strike to protest the sackings,” the source alleged.
As a conequence of that, the governor then instructed guards to prevent staff leaving until the issue was resolved. “The instruction was to prevent any serious disorder that might hit banks throughout the country,” the source added.
The two sacked members are reportedly being held in Tripoli.
