By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 1 September 2013:
Oil sector workers, angry at the shutdown of export terminals and production fields by protestors and . . .[restrict]Petroleum Facilities Guards, will themselves be protesting the closures tomorrow in front of the GNC.
The demonstration is being organised by the Oil Sector Workers Union on Monday morning in front of the General National Congress headquarters.
“We are going to send a message in front the Congress to prove that the oil workers are totally against the stupid actions of closing the oil fields across Libya,” a member of the Oil Sector Workers Union Abdulrazaq Elumami told the Libya Herald. He said that those behind the shutdown were pursing their own narrow interests against those of Libya.
The OSWU held a meeting on last Thursday to discuss the latest developments in what has been happening in the oil institutions, Alumami said. As a result, they decided to take tomorrow’s action as well as explain the why they were doing it.
Oil, he said, was the most important resource in Libya and the “only income” for all Libyans.
” I personally will be at the protest carrying a banner saying ‘Fear Allah to help Libya and Libyans’,” Alumami added.
The shutdowns are the result of a mix of reason which include calls by locals for work and better pay and conditions for exiting employees as well as claims that oil has been sold illegally by some state-run institutions and demands that the government and the Congress to stop neglecting Libyans towns and regions.
Meanwhile, elders from the Magharba tribe living in the area stretching from the area around Ajdabiya to the border of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania at Wadi Al-Ahmar (the Red Valley) have put out their own statement opposing the oil closures and calling on members of the tribe employed in the Petroleum Facilities Guard to stop the blockade and re-open the terminals.
In a statement following a meeting in Brega on Friday, they said that the oil belongs to all Libyans and not simpy to the Maghariba tribe.
However, according to the Libyan news agency LANA, they also demanded that the government invest heavily in housing, infrastructure, roads, airports and ports in towns and cities across the country and that it provide jobs for their children to work at various state facilities.
They complained, too, that the neglect of the Qaddafi regime was being continued by the present government and that their area was still suffering from marginalisation.
The result, they said, was resentment in the area leading to protests at the oil fields and terminals. People had demanded their rights and, finding no response, had taken control of the various oil ports which in turn resulted in oil exports coming to a halt. [/restrict]
