Original title: shortage of truck drivers becomes one of the main causes of Britain's "gasoline shortage": economic Information Daily

Since late September, the phenomenon of "gasoline shortage" at British gas stations has intensified: some have put up "no oil" signs and some have lined up long queues of cars. For fear that drivers who can't get gas are scrambling to refuel, this "run" phenomenon is exacerbated.

Behind these phenomena, it is not entirely due to the lack of oil, but to the lack of large truck drivers who transport oil from storage sites to gas stations. The British Road Transport Association estimates that there is a shortage of about 100000 truckers in the UK. The shortage of large truck drivers has a series of knock-on consequences for the economy. Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Association, said: "there are clear signs that rising transport costs, labour shortages and post-Brexit red tape have pushed commodity costs into consumer prices." Duncan Bullock, director of the Royal Chartered Institute of Purchasing and supply, said manufacturing growth slowed for the fourth month in a row due to supply chain damage and labour shortages.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted the Office for National Statistics as saying that before the outbreak, the shortage of large truck drivers in the UK had reached about 60, 000, which was exacerbated by the return of more large truck drivers from the European Union during the outbreak. In addition, the epidemic has delayed the training of drivers and the issuance of relevant qualifications, which is also one of the reasons.

In order to solve the current shortage of large truck drivers, the British Department of Transport, together with the Department of Education, the Visa and Immigration Office of the Ministry of the Interior, and other departments issued a package of responses: from October to Christmas, provide short-term visas for about 5000 foreign truck drivers; train as many as 4000 new truck drivers; invest 10 million pounds to create new skills training camps; and provide corresponding qualifications for tanker drivers who need safety qualifications.

At the same time, in order to alleviate the "gasoline shortage" caused by the lack of large truck drivers, the British government has temporarily deployed military vehicle drivers to help transport oil since October.

However, many enterprises or commercial organizations say that these government measures are only expedient measures and cannot solve the fundamental problems, and that the government needs to come up with more systematic and longer-term plans to solve a series of labor shortages.

Steve Granite, chief executive of Abbey Logistics, a British logistics company, called on the government to extend visas to keep the supply chain running and to strengthen the training of more drivers. Dickinson also urged the government to "expand the scale and scope of the new visa program for foreign drivers."

John McLean, chairman of the City of London branch of the British Board of Directors Association, told Xinhua that the government should take incentives to upgrade companies to improve the labour force. "the number of skilled workers in the UK is declining and the right people must be trained in the right places."