By Sami Zaptia.
London, 7 September 2020:
The Interior Ministry of Libya’s internationally recognized Libyan government based in Tripoli announced yesterday the arrest of a gang of thieves suspected of stealing electrical wires and cables from the national grid. The arrests were made in the city of Khoms.
The Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that investigations had shown that the suspects were hiding electrical wires by smelting them, noting that legal action had been taken against them.
The report has drawn wide public denunciation of the thieves on the Ministry’s official Facebook page. Thieves of electricity cables have been toppling pylons across the country contributing to the country’s acute power cuts and the misery of Libyans.
For quite a while now, there has been a call for a concerted effort by the state against the thieves, with calls for better intelligence gathering and investigations by the security forces, and stricter punishment for those found guilty.
The country’s acute power cuts has been one of the many factors attributed to have contributed to Libya’s recent demonstrations and the subsequent political fall out.
