Last week, the Syndicate of Gas Station Owners and Fuel Distributors announced that they were going to give the government 72 hours to find a solution for the issue of petrol or the price will be raised to 1,900LL.
In response, the Ministry of Energy released a price list on February 5th. However, the syndicate was not happy with the list as they referred to it as a “stab in the back.”
Accordingly, they announced that they will stage a symbolic sit-in on Friday outside of the ministry.
“We are being robbed and we have remained silent in order to reach a peaceful solution but this has not happened,” a Syndicate’s spokesman said.
He also emphasized the need for an investigation into the alleged discrepancies in the numbers that were issued by the ministry.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab promised them that he will help fix their problem as soon as the government wins the parliament’s confidence.
The issue of the gas crisis has been ongoing since October 17th. Between late November and early December, they launched an open strike due to the increasing price of the dollar. As a reaction to the strike, many motorists opted to close down the roads.
This upcoming strike is part of a long series of unsolved grievances that have plagued the country as a result of a currency that keeps losing its value as the days go on.
No matter what solutions have been implemented by either Riad Salameh or any of the other people in power, none of them seem to be able to even slightly alleviate the effects of the crisis.
As the chairman of Brax Petroleum and member of the syndicate said last week to Al-Markazia, “They simply don’t understand the reality of this situation and are only interested in maintaining their positions.”