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world news Dialuna 27 September 2021

UK gas stations run dry as trucker shortage sparks hoarding

(AP) — Thousands of contributed to empty super-
British gas stations ran market shelves and shuttered
dry Sunday, an industry gas pumps.
group said, as motorists
scrambled to fill up amid After weeks of mounting
a supply disruption due to pressure, the U.K.’s Con-
a shortage of truck driv- servative government an-
ers. nounced Saturday that it will
issue thousands of emergency
The Petrol Retailers Associa- visas to foreign truck drivers
tion, which represents almost to help prevent a Christmas
5,500 independent outlets, without turkey or toys for
said about two-thirds of its many British families. The
members were reporting that government said it would is-
they had sold out their fuel, sue 5,000 three-month visas
with the rest “partly dry and for truck drivers starting in
running out soon.” October, and another 5,500
for poultry workers.
Association chairman Brian
Madderson said the shortages Industry groups welcomed
were the result of “panic buy- the new visa plan, although
ing, pure and simple.” the British Retail Consor-
tium said it was “too little,
“There is plenty of fuel in too late.”
this country, but it is in the
wrong place for the motor- as some drivers waited for U.K. is short tens of thou- European Union last year. Ruby McGregor-Smith,
ists,” he told the BBC. “It is hours. Police were called to sands of truckers, due to a president of the Confedera-
still in the terminals and the one London gas station Sun- perfect storm of factors in- Several countries, including tion of British Industry, said
refineries.” day after a scuffle broke out. cluding the coronavirus pan- the United States and Ger- the announcement was “the
Police said a man was arrest- demic, an aging workforce many, also are experiencing a equivalent of throwing a
Long lines of vehicles formed ed on suspicion of assault. and an exodus of foreign shortage of truck drivers. The thimble of water on a bon-
at many gas stations over the workers following Britain’s problem has been especially fire.”
weekend, and tempers frayed The haulage industry says the Brexit departure from the visible in Britain, where it has

Haitians returning to a homeland that’s far from welcoming

P O RT- AU - P R I N C E , handouts and a “good luck
Haiti (AP) — Deported out there” from migration Of the more than 18,000
from the United States, officials -- many setting foot people the United Nations
Pierre Charles landed in the country for the first counts among those displaced
a week ago in Port-au- time in years, even decades. in Port-au-Prince since
Prince, a capital more gang violence began to spike
dangerous and dystopian More than a city, Port-au- in May, the International
than the one he’d left four Prince it is an archipelago Organization for Migration
years before. Unable to of gang-controlled islands only has access “to about
reach his family, he left in a sea of despair. Some 5,000, maybe 7,000,” said
the airport alone, on foot. neighborhoods are Giuseppe Loprete, head of
abandoned. Others are the IOM mission here. “We
Charles was unsure how barricaded behind fires, are negotiating access to the
to make his way to the destroyed cars and piles of rest.”
Carrefour neighborhood garbage, occupied by heavily
through a city shrouded in armed men. On Saturday, Elice Fleury didn’t pay
smoke and dust, often tolling a local newspaper reported much attention to the people men, he called his wife. “I Martissant has become one
with gunfire from gangs and 10 kidnappings in the running and shouting outside can’t get out,” she told him of the disconnected islands
police. On the airport road, previous 24 hours including his bakery until he heard in the capital. Buses carrying
the 39-year-old laborer tried a journalist, a singer’s mother the bursts of gunfire. When Fleury spent that night in people and merchandise
unsuccessfully to flag down and a couple driving with he looked out the door on a nearby square with other from Port-au-Prince to the
packed buses. He asked their toddler, who was left June 2, he saw heavily armed neighbors, talking to his wife south of the country form
motorcycle drivers to take behind in the car. masked men pulling people by telephone -- their children convoys to travel through
him but was told again and out of their homes and taking crying in the background Martissant, often waiting
again that the trip was too Most of the population of control of his Martissant -- as she explained that the for hours and sometimes
risky. Port-au-Prince has no access neighborhood. gunmen had fired tear gas, overnight until they pay the
to basic public services, no searched house by house and gang members for clearance
Finally, someone agreed to drinking water, electricity The main road in Martissant were patrolling the streets. to travel, according to drivers.
take him as far as a bus stop. or garbage collection. The is a strategic artery that
deportees join thousands connects the Haitian capital A day later, the family escaped, Doctors Without Borders
“I know there are barricades of fellow Haitians who with the south of the country. leaving everything behind, was forced to shut down its
and shootings,” Charles have been displaced from The gang wanted control. and reunited in a temporary hospital in Martissant, where
said as he took off into their homes, pushed out by They had surrounded the shelter. Three months later, the agency had provided care
the unknown, “but I have violence to take up residence neighborhood that lies the Fleurys languish in that for the last 15 years.
nowhere else to go.” in crowded schools, churches, between mountains and temporary shelter, sleeping
sports centers and makeshift the sea in a well-planned on the floor of a sports center Seidina Ousseni, Head of
At least 2,853 Haitians camps among ruins. Many occupation, and were firing a few miles from the house the mission, describes the
deported from Texas have of these people are out of on the police station. When to which they neither can nor situation on the ground of
landed here in the last week reach even for humanitarian Fleury saw the officers fleeing want to return. Port-au-Prince in two words:
with $15-$100 in cash organizations. instead of facing the armed “Urban warfare.