Where have Libya's children gone? Long time missing"
Franklin Lamb
Tripoli, Libya
The quality of life continues to cascade in certain areas of Western Libya while public anxiety noticeably rises over missing Libyan children as the first week of an unusually stressful Ramadan passes.
The shortage of gasoline has become acute and despite government efforts to curtail price gauging, one taxi driver told this observer yesterday that while the usual price of "benzene' was five liters (one gallon) for $.40 (forty US cents) he is now having to pay as much as " 4 dinars for one liter of petrol!" That is roughly the equivalent of 13 US dollars for a gallon of gasoline, a huge price surge in a country long accustomed to cheap, heavily subsidized fuel. "Informal economy" (black market) fuel arrives in car trunks from the Tunisian border and its increasingly common to see fellows with a make shift funnel trying to get more benzene into their vehicle tanks than they splash and spill on neighborhood streets.
Tripoli residents trying to fuel a car on 8/5/11 with black market benzene--often spilling a fair bit in the process. Photo: flamb
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