Zintan, Libya, April 2, 2019 – By Imed Lamloum and Nawas Al-Darraji – Hundreds of blue pipes lay abandoned in Libya’s Zintan, leaving residents struggling to get enough water after the 2011 revolution halted their spot on the world’s largest irrigation project. “We have nothing in Zintan,” said Al-Sid Chanta, a trucker who collects water supplied from a reservoir to deliver to residents’ homes. Without the pipes in place to channel water directly to the city, he makes the trip eight times a day just to meet people’s basic needs. “The (public) services are very poor,” said Chanta, who estimated each family needs around 40,000 litres of water a month.
Zintan was set to be part of Libya’s Great Man-Made River Project, a vast scheme to tap water from underground aquifers deep in the Sahara desert, purify it and transport it north. But the city’s place on the project was abandoned after the 2011 ousting of dictator Moamer Kadhafi, leaving locals to rely on the old delivery system for water.
The reservoir feeds wells at the foot of the Nafusa mountains, where water is collected by truckers who take the steep road to supply less than 50 percent of Zintan’s 60,000 residents. Abdallah al-Rammah, director of city hall’s water department, said there is a “large deficit” in water and the distribution network dates to the 1970s. The same system is used by other cities around the mountains, such as Rojbane, Nalout and Yefren. Zintan also lacks a public sewage system, meaning used household water feeds into septic tanks which have polluted the groundwater — later pumped and used by residents. That has resulted in regular Hepatitis C diagnoses, especially among children, a doctor in Zintan said on condition of anonymity.
– ‘We lack everything’ –
The mayor of Zintan, Mustafa al-Barouni, said the city has suffered “injustice” and decades of marginalisation. “We find that some cities have basic services, telecommunications, roads, ports and job opportunities, and others (like Zintan) have nothing,” he told AFP. The mayor hit out at “corruption and the waste of resources” by transitional authorities, claiming the city receives barely a pittance from the state budget despite a drive for decentralisation. “We have often resorted to debt,” he said, working with local investors to fund projects.
City authorities cannot meet the water needs of all residents, meaning some have pay for privately-run trucks which are expensive. Political power remains divided in Libya, with a UN-backed Government of National Accord established in the capital Tripoli in 2015. But a rival administration sits in the east of the country, supported by
Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army. Such deadlock has hit the finances of the oil-rich country, evident in Zintan by the cash-strapped shuttered banks and the long queues at petrol stations.
There is little sign of development in the city, apart from a few private construction sites, while African migrants carrying hammers or shovels wait desperately for work. “We lack everything,” said Mohamad al-Garaj, in his 60s, who complained of price rises. But for him, the water shortage remains the greatest problem: “We ask for
help from the government and international organisations.”
Development projects were put on hold in the wake of the revolution and international efforts to break the political impasse have so far failed. Attention now turns to a United Nations conference mid-April, which Zintan’s mayor hopes can bring changes to his resource-strapped city. “The tension is such, that everyone at this point is convinced of the necessity of finding a solution,” he said.
Source: AFP
Roads deadlier than guns in Libya
By Nawas al-Darragi
Tripoli, April 4, 2019 – Roads in conflict-riddled Libya, where petrol is cheaper than mineral water, rank among the deadliest in the world. Disregard for traffic rules, a dilapidated infrastructure and cars that fail to meet safety standards combine to make road accidents in Libya more lethal than incidents involving weapons. In Tariq al-Siqqa, a public park in central Tripoli, hundreds of car wrecks are stacked up on top of each other as testimony of the carnage. Some vehicles still carry blood stains, others have shreds of clothing or a shoe left lying inside.
The interior ministry’s traffic department recorded 4,115 road accidents across the country in 2018, killing 2,500 people and injuring more than 3,000 others. “Libya holds the (world) record for the number of deadly road accidents per capita,” said department spokesman Colonel Abdelnasser Ellafi.
Last year’s road deaths outranked the hundreds of people killed annually in clashes between rival armed groups since Libya’s 2011 revolt that toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi. Speeding is the number one cause of accidents in Libya — a country of just over six million people and more than 4.5 million vehicles, according to the department. With a litre of petrol, which is subsidised by the government, costing only 0.15 dinars (around 10 US cents), less than the price of a litre of mineral water, gas-guzzlers are all the rage.
Some of Libya’s dilapidated roads, however, “have not been repaired in 60 years”, said traffic department head General Mohamad Hadiya, making them totally unsuitable. In Tripoli — home to two million inhabitants — the number of privately-owned cars has almost quadrupled in nearly a decade, jumping from 600,000 in 2010 to two million this year. Together with state-owned vehicles, taxis and public transport, the number rises to three million in the capital alone.
– ‘No respect for traffic cops’ –
Car salesmen have also flooded the market with imported cheap vehicles which are mostly used cars and lack basic safety measures such as seatbelts or airbags, officials say. In a bid to fight back, the authorities in February passed a law banning the import of cars older than 10 years. And for the first time in years, the government has set aside funds in its 2019 budget to repair the country’s roads. “The roads are systematically flooded after rain and bridges are unusable and need urgent maintenance work,” said Ellafi. His department has also launched campaigns to raise awareness among motorists about traffic laws and deploy patrols to catch traffic violators. But with the country thrown into anarchy and awash with weapons since 2011, the patrols keep a low profile to avoid reprisals from angry motorists. They mostly just direct traffic on the congested roads. “Young people have no respect for traffic cops because they know they won’t be punished,” said motorist Ahmad Rajab, as he stepped out of his 4X4 in Martyrs’ Square. “But we should not only blame drivers,” the 35-year-old said, pointing to the state of the roads as well as the lack of road signs and traffic lights. Rajab himself was injured in a road accident, which has left him with a limp. “I was driving at night along an unlit road east of Tripoli and I hit a pole that was lying across the road,” he said. “Road accidents have become silent killers that have claimed many lives in Libya.”
By AFP
