Lebanese parliament approved yesterday yet another advance payment for the Electricite du Liban (EDL) in order to avoid a total blackout in the country as fuel is running out. The 200 million dollar will be enough for EDL to stay operational for another two months, after which it will require additional funds to buy fuel as the company is broke and doesn’t make any profits.
The real problem here is that lawmakers are calling it an “advance payment”, yet EDL is unable to pay those 200 million dollars anytime soon, let alone the 40 billion dollars in debt accumulated over the years. To make things even worse, these millions of dollars were basically taken from whatever is left from the depositors’ dollars.
So to sum things up, lawmakers are taking our money to pay a bankrupt company that’s barely feeding us with 6 hours of electricity per day. And what’s their argument? We will drown in darkness if EDL shuts down.
They had 20 years or so to solve the electricity crisis, they had two years to figure out a way to speed up the process and get everything on track, they were offered help from foreign entities, yet somehow we’re here today with no electricity, no government and no plans.
Funnily enough, lawmakers also passed a law proposal related to recovering stolen public funds, that is linked to another law passed last year that was never implemented. They basically want to recover the stolen public funds that they stole from us, by forming committees that they name, control and manage.