Libya heatwave brings protests, power cuts and water shortages as temperatures hit 48°C

A heatwave in Libya brought renewed power cuts, protests and bottled-water shortages as temperatures in the country’s north reached between 39°C and 48°C on Monday.

Hundreds of residents protested in Tripoli and its suburbs on Sunday evening against electricity outages linked to the intense heat.

Protesters gathered outside government offices, ministries and state-owned companies, blocking entrances with rubble or sand.

Images circulating on Facebook showed young people burning tyres and blocking roads in central Tripoli and the districts of Tajura, Janzur and Ain Zara.

The General Electricity Company of Libya has introduced rolling blackouts, sometimes twice in one day.

Butcher Anas Al-Deeb told AFP that the outages lasted between six and seven hours, forcing him to use a generator and increase refrigeration to prevent goods from spoiling.

The power cuts have also disrupted water supplies, businesses and telecommunications networks.

Drinking-water bottling plants have been forced to halt production because repeated outages and shortages of fuel for backup generators have severely affected their operations.

AFP journalists observed bottled-water prices doubling in less than a week, while many shops in Tripoli had been out of stock for the previous two days.

Tap water is not drinkable in Libya, where a litre of bottled water costs more than a litre of gasoline.

The Dajla water plant in Tripoli’s Wadi al-Rabii suburb reported “major difficulties affecting the production process” because of fuel supplies.

The plant said on Sunday that it expected production to resume soon.

Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves, but its electricity network suffers from underinvestment and the country’s political divisions.

Power outages were previously common in Libya, although electricity supplies had improved markedly during the past three years.