The Chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) has hit out at fuel smugglers, blaming them for the deaths of Libyans.
In a strongly-worded statement, Mustafa Sanalla said:
“I was deeply hurt by the story I heard yesterday of a Libyan family who suffocated to death as a result of using charcoal for heating due to the power cuts. This family is one example of thousands of tragic cases that the ordinary desperate Libyan citizen suffers from because of the criminal practices by the gangs who smuggle the subsidized fuel across the borders and because of everyone who closes a field or hinders the operations of a productive public facility. The millions that the country loses because of these gangs’ crimes could have been used in improving the power networks and the maintenance of the power plants in order to solve the rotational load shedding problem”
“I shouldn’t forget to pay tribute to the souls of those patriotic martyrs of fuel smuggling combating soldiers who were assassinated by the smugglers’ treacherous bullets”
“There is no justification other than the ridiculous attempt to defend the fuel smuggling bandits, trying to justify their crimes and disguise clear facts by telling lies and fraud. This is shame on every traitor and unperceptive individual who shouts with falsehood by defending and ingratiating those killing criminals.”
“The responsibility of the occurrence of any security breaches of any kind, size or motive at Zawia Refinery will be assumed by the gangs of fuel smuggling. We will consider such breaches as terrorist acts and the doer of such acts, whoever are, will be considered supported by those gangs and will be charged of terrorism. Unprecedented local and international procedures will be taken against whoever tries to abuse the wealth of the Libya people. We will never be tolerant with this issue in any way.”
“I urge again the inhabitants of the western region, in general, and people of Zawai city and Zwara city in particular. I call upon their conscience and patriotism to stand together against the criminal bandits and to pull out these poisonous weeds from their land, because they are the first to be affected by those gangs due to the shortage of fuel in petrol stations or its unavailability at the official price, in addition to the interruptions of the desalination station in Zwara resulted from the fuel smuggling gangs’ stealing of the fuel’s allocations despite Brega Oil Marketing Company’s providing the distribution companies with the required quantities.”
“Economy Controllers affiliated with Ministry of Economy in different regions are the entities which give permission to the four distribution companies (namely, Sharara Dahabia, Rahela, Libya Oil and Turek Sari’a) to issue licenses for the petrol station after separating of distribution activity and transfer of oil products under the Resolution of the General People’s Committee (previously) of the year 2007 No. 289 and 293 and under the current political division which led to dividing the distribution companies departments, which has to be stopped sooner and not later.”
“These gangs are part of international criminal organizations that are involved in smuggling fuels, humans, and drugs across the borders. Their presence is a threat for both the Libyan national security and the International security in the Mediterranean region. Everyone must be awakened from the hangover of their narrow-minded material interests that they are chasing, because the threat that Libya is facing is a very huge one.”
(Source: NOC)
