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FUEL COST TROUBLES * STRIKES WORLDWIDE
* Greece - Truckers ON STRIKE
Athens,Greece -The Sofia Echo (Bulgaria), by Spasena Baramova -23 May 2008: -- The increase in fuel prices over the past months triggered a series of strikes by those employed in transportation around the Balkans... The Greeks were the first to start action with a 10-day truckers’ strike that led to considerable fuel and goods shortage and caused rising tension around the country before it ended on May 15. Romanian road carriers followed suit on May 12, passing on the torch to Bulgarian transport companies, who started protests on May 19... In Greece, tanker truck owners together with owners of public-use trucks demanded a 13 per cent increase in their haulage charges instead of the five per cent agreed by the Greek government the previous month. They also sought permission to use the national highways on weekends and had demands relating to pensions and social insurance... Meanwhile, the ongoing protest actions had an immediate impact on fuel supply in Greece... There were also shortages in some food markets caused by producers’ inability to transport goods... The truckers’ protest also hit shipping as several ferries failed to leave ports for lack of fuel, Athens News Agency reported. At 5am on May 12, taxi drivers joined the truckers’ protest, staging a 24-hour strike... Finally, on May 14, tanker truck owners decided to stop protesting. They were followed by the owners of public-use trucks on May 15... * Romania - Truckers ON STRIKE
In the meantime, Romania faced similar actions on the part of truck drivers. On May 12 about a hundred trucks drove along Bucharest’s ring road protesting against the national roads toll. They demanded that this toll should only be charged on motorways... Other requests included providing more transparency when collecting fuel excises and improving rest sites... However, the Romanian transport ministry claimed that the revenue from motorway tolls alone could not provide enough funding for the upkeep and expansion of national roads, so necessitating the levying of tolls on the latter... The truckers’ protest continued on May 13 when more than 300 trucks drove along Bucharest’s ring road... It ended at midnight the same day after government representatives assured the protesting truckers they would meet prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu the following week... (Photo: REUTERS)
* Canada - Gas prices squeezing truckers
Dieppe,Nova Scotia,Canada -The Chronicle Herald (Halifax,Nova Scotia), by MARK TAYLOR -May 23, 2008: -- The New Brunswick government should help the province’s truckers deal with rising fuel costs, the head of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association says... Pump prices for regular self-serve gasoline in New Brunswick rose only 0.1 cents on Thursday but the price of self-serve diesel rose from a maximum price of $1.50 a litre last week to $1.54... Long-haul trucks use diesel fuel... "When you are a region like ours, we are apart from the main markets you would think of. We are not a high-volume area or an area of high population and certainly when you are looking at things like the Atlantic Gateway, Atlantica and self-sufficiency, the rising price of fuel is really going to have an impact on all of these initiatives and on the economy," said Peter Nelson, executive director of the New Brunswick Association... He said Atlantic Canada relies heavily on trucking, so both truckers and consumers feel the impact of higher fuel prices... To add to the headache for truckers, many trucking companies are also dealing with tighter credit terms. He said lending institutions are also making credit terms more difficult...
Labels: fuel cost troubles
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