© Provided by Xinhua SWEIDA, Syria, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) As heating fuel has become out of reach for many Syrians because of the U.S. economic sanctions
some have had to close temporarily, while others have run out of one or more types of fuel. rival supplier esso says it s also experienced problems at a small number of sites it operates in partnership with tesco. the problem isn t a lack of fuel. there is plenty available at the country s refineries. but there simply aren t enough tanker drivers to take it petrol stations. well, it s happened because of a multitude of factors. brexit we ve lost about 20,000 european drivers. we lost about 40,000 trucker training tests during the pandemic because of social distancing rules those were tests cancelled. and we ve had a historic shortage in this country of tens
of thousands of lorry drivers. and that means we ve got a shortage now of 100,000. that has already led to bare shelves in supermarkets and other stores, which people within the sector have warned are likely to get worse in the run up to christmas. the haulage industry body logistics uk says the shortage is a very serious issue, but it has warned consumers against panic buying fuel. that is a call echoed by the government, which says people should refuel as normal. it points out it has already taken steps to make training new hgv drivers quicker and easier. the fuel is there and it can continue to flow. i m not saying there aren t pressures there are. it s just we are making many, many changes and moving heaven and earth, if you like, to get people into driving hgvs. not all petrol retailers are affected by the current problems. morrisons, co op and sainsbury s say their petrol stations are operating as normal. but the fact shortages are occurring at all has highlighted once again ho
one of them so they don t know when they will get a fresh delivery. normally if they need to they can call up and a truck will arrive within 2a hours. some suggestion that, as far as bp are concerned, that could take up to ten days to get here. so it is a problem if people start buying more, and the boss was telling me a little earlier theyjust don t know when the next supply will come. the planning is all very difficult at the moment anyway for the company for the companies deliverin- the fuel, so if you put that out of sync it becomes even more difficult and problematic for them. talking logistics, i know you get a couple of deliveries every ten days. how long, that would last you five days? what are they tell you about getting deliveries? they are saying, we hope you get it but we can t guarantee it, so we re just not sure until we get into about two days time if we will get another we just don t know at the moment. so problematic as far as planning is concerned. what is the so