He said: “We have talked for months regarding the issue of generators and explained the mechanism that we will adopt, but unfortunately we did not reach the response that we waited for from the generator owners.
Therefore, I am standing today in front of the New Justice Palace to fulfill my promise to the citizens to supervise the procedures before the judiciary and to return the citizens their rights. For a while, some believed that the ministry was no longer interested because we were preoccupied with supermarkets, foodstuffs and their prices, but this is not true. All matters reach the ministry and work teams carry out their duties and we will prove Today in the matter of generators, the state is capable.”
He added: “We have said that we can, by law, go to the extreme, and what happened today will be translated on all Lebanese lands, because it is not allowed to spread immorality and obscenity in the issue of generators. It is fair and includes maintenance, but things went far with the generators’ owners, so measures were necessary.”
And the Minister of Economy added: “Today in Adliya, we have six decisions issued in the name of the Lebanese people, and I will mention them by names, and the imprisonment in them has been replaced by fines, but if they are repeated, the imprisonment becomes a fait accompli.
The first decision, in the name of Emile Habib Ghassan Al-Sukhn, RGI, Elia Dagher (the ruling is repeated twice), Youssef Kayrouz, and Paul Gerges Moawad, and each of them was sentenced to thirty million pounds following replacing imprisonment with a fine. Before the competent judge and the relevant security authorities.
Salam continued: “What I want to clarify is that we do not want to close this sector and cut off electricity to the people. But we will cooperate with the municipalities to confiscate if necessary, because things are no longer bearable.”
As for the violations, Salam confirmed: “The most important of them was the failure to install meters and adherence to the pricing of the Ministry of Energy, as well as prepayment and some other heresies.
Regarding the capacity of the municipalities, he said: “It is true that there is a shortage in many of the Ministry of Economy, but the municipalities have to stand with the ministry according to the law. There are 1,055 municipalities that have to assume their responsibilities and implement the law, not violate it, especially in terms of pricing and installing meters, otherwise we will hold them accountable and expose them by name.”
Salam concluded: “The road is long, and everyone must respect the laws in this difficult crisis, and let what happened today be a lesson to everyone, especially since there are large files for some generator owners, and we will have measures greater than thirty million pounds because we will remain with the citizen.”
