A number of people protested Wednesday afternoon at the door of Al-Joumhouria Bank in Tripoli’s Martyrs Square, expressing anger at the acute shortage of cash at banks and denouncing the current state of affairs in the country.
The protesters also called on all Libyans to take to the streets to express their rejection of the low living standards and conditions the country is going through, urging as well the Head of the Presidential Council of the UN-proposed government, Fayez Al-Serraj, to come and meet them at the square, in an implication that they want him to pump cash into the banks.
Libya has been suffering from a suffocating cash shortage at the banks with the Central Bank of Libya linking the shortage to the withdrawal of cash by the businessmen and loss of trust in the banking system by the depositors, who cashed out their money causing acute cash crisis at the banks.
Worsening the crisis than ever and adding to the division between the west and east of Libya, the parallel Al-Bayda-based CBL signed a deal with Russia to print new banknotes and started distributing them to the banks in the eastern region. However, these banknotes were regarded as counterfeit by the Tripoli-based CBL, prohibiting their use by banks, businessmen and citizens.