The Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said on Wednesday that the government's program to transfer jurisdiction and authorities to municipalities has become a reality to confront "abhorrent centralism."
In a speech during the first meeting of the Supreme Council of Local Administration for 2023 on Wednesday evening, Dbeibah said the meetings of mayors throughout the week were a clear indication of solidarity and cooperation with the aim of activating the local administration program, referring to enabling municipalities to collect their local revenues and involving them for the first time in the development budget.
"There is a growing awareness and real commitment about the fact that achieving equitable development and improving basic services requires a great capacity of municipalities to exercise these competencies." Dbeibah added, hailing the support of Libya's partners in the activation of the decentralization and saying that he had made instructions to all ministries to implement this meeting's recommendations.
"We support the policy of disclosure and transparency by launching the electronic local contracting platform for municipalities. Supervising the election of a number of municipal councils reflects their importance in bringing about change," Dbeibah said, but he stressed that "the road to breaking up centralism is very long and requires a set of legislations."
Dbeibah said he asked the Ministry of Local Governing to present a package of executive decisions that supports the continuation of the decentralization track for approval, concluding.
