By Libya Herald reporter.
Tripoli, 23 May 2017:
The Fuel and Gas Crisis Committee in Tripoli has again widened its remit, raiding a warehouse at the market in Tripoli’s southern Kremia district and seizing seized foodstuffs stored there.
The operation, codenamed National Wakening, resulted in the arrest of a number of dealers and their employees, mostly non-Libyans. The committee claimed that the commodities, most of them subsidised goods for which letters of credit had been authorised, had been taken out of the market by the foreign traders to create shortages and so force up prices.
They also claimed that the goods were badly stored, and in temperatures of over 40 degrees centigrade.
The powerful committee was originally set up in 2015 to deal with major shortages of petrol and bottled gas in Tripoli. It has expanded its role, even to organising naval operations to stop smuggling of petrol to Malta and to ordering a night curfew for fuel truck drivers.
