Widespread Protests and Strikes: The Paycheck Bomb 'Explodes' Libya's Streets

Protests and sectoral strikes are escalating across Libya, threatening to exhaust critical sectors and drive them toward complete paralysis, as union voices and working classes intensify demands for salary scale revisions and wage hikes to match soaring prices and successive inflation waves.

These protest movements have placed Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s government in a complex dilemma, as mounting public anger intersects with crushing financial pressures on the national treasury, turning responses to calls for improved living standards into an additional drain on state resources.

The scope of protest has expanded to include educational and health institutions, reaching oil facilities; the Libyan Universities Union, representing university academic bodies, announced sit-ins and a temporary suspension of studies at several institutions, including the University of Tripoli, until financial dues are paid and a unified salary schedule is implemented.

Basic and secondary school teachers also threatened a full strike during massive rallies held in Tripoli and cities across western and eastern regions, pushing for enforcement of legal wage increases, while major hospitals such as Tripoli University Hospital saw partial service suspensions.

In addition to this wave of protest, the Zawiya refinery partially closed under pressure from security personnel at oil installations demanding financial resolution, while retirees continue their sit-ins demanding an increase in minimum pension thresholds.

The crisis deepens amid data from the Central Bank of Libya, which paints a grim picture of fiscal balances—salary expenditures alone accounted for approximately 73.3 billion Libyan dinars (about $11 billion) out of a total public spending exceeding 136.8 billion dinars ($21 billion), meaning the wages sector absorbs more than half of the national budget.

Official indicators reveal a dangerous acceleration in current spending, with the average monthly budget allocated to salaries—funded by the general treasury—rising above 6.2 billion dinars per month (around $950 million), a figure poised to grow further if the government meets current demands without securing alternative funding sources.

Structural complexities worsen as the central bank reports a significant shortfall in foreign currency usage, driven by rising expenditures amid volatile oil revenues and declining global crude prices, which constitute over 90% of the country’s national income.