wireshark dissector- many locals in lua file

Question

I'm writing a tool that transfers some XML file into a LUA file. The XML file contains above 100 messages.

I have to have as minimum following 2 statements for each message:

local p_multi = Proto("multi", "MultiProto");
local f=p_multi.fields

meaning that I have at least 200 'local' records which is limited by LUA. I've tried to use it as follows, but getting an error:

local locals={}
locals.p_multi = Proto("multi", "MultiProto");
locals.f=p_multi.fields

I've also tried to remove the local statement, but in Wireshark I've received an empty message content (i.e all the fields were with null value)

p_multi = Proto("multi", "MultiProto");
f=p_multi.fields

Any suggestion how to solve it?

Thank you :)