Turkish construction firm starts to evacuate employees in Libya

ISTANBUL (A.A) - 23.02.2011 - A leading Turkish construction firm, which employs 250 Turkish nationals in Libya, has brought 128 of its employees back to Turkey due to the ongoing turmoil in the north African country.
TAV Construction, which conducts the New Tripoli International Airport project together with its partners, has decided to evacuate its employees in Libya due to the clashes that have arisen in Benghazi and spread to capital Tripoli, said the company in a statement on Wednesday.
Employees will stay in Turkey until the tension in the country calms down, the statement said.
TAV said nearly 4,000 people worked in the New Tripoli International Airport project, adding that 250 of them were Turkish citizens and 3,000 were Thai and Vietnamese nationals.
The company said 128 Turkish employees had returned to Turkey by a Tunisair plane, as TAV worked closely with its partners Lebanese CCC and Brazil-based Odebrecht for the evacuation of the employees of other nationalities.
TAV Construction was born with the new Istanbul Ataturk International Airport project.
After being awarded the Build-Operate-Transfer tender for the new international airport terminal and multi-storey car park in 1997, first TAV Group Company was established by Tepe Construction and Akfen Holding as a joint Venture, hence TAV.
Tripoli Airport Terminal Building Construction Project has been awarded to Odebrecht – TAV – CCC Joint Venture, as of September 2007.
The project consists of construction of two terminal buildings, having an area of 175,000 sq.m. each, with 48 lifts, 26 elevators, 160 check-in counters, 12 baggage handling carrousels and 32 fixed and 64 mobile passenger boarding bridges.
The passenger capacity of the new twin terminals will be 20 million passengers a year.