DNA Special: How are truck drivers responsible for UK's massive fuel crisis

A famous and fictional detective character in the world of novels and movies is James Bond. In the movies, James Bond works for the British intelligence agency MI5 who fulfills his mission by sitting in vehicles equipped with the technology of the future.

But if this fictional character were a reality, he would have been in line in Britain today to get petrol in his car as petrol and diesel are almost exhausted at petrol pumps in Britain. Maybe then the name of James Bond's upcoming film would have been named - No Time To Drive.

Let us talk about Britain where at fuel stations petrol and diesel are almost over and little fuel is left with kilometer-long lines of vehicles.

The situation is that the driver of the famous football player Cristiano Ronaldo stood for more than seven hours at a petrol pump with his car worth Rs 2.25 crore but he could not get petrol in it.

In Britain, people want to get their vehicle's tank full by any means, for this someone is depositing petrol in the garbage bag and someone is filling petrol in the drums and bottles brought from home.

But the reason for this is not that there has been a sudden shortage of petrol and diesel in Britain but the real reason for this is that there is a shortage of truck drivers in Britain who used to deliver fuel to the petrol pumps. That is, the supply chain of petrol and diesel in Britain is completely broken.

There is currently a shortage of 1 lakh drivers in the UK to deliver petrol and diesel to fuel stations. Fuel delivery in Britain was mostly done by people from other countries. But after Brexit, many truck drivers working in Britain moved to other countries of Europe or returned to their country of origin.

After this, the same thing happened during COVID-19. All in all, there is currently enough oil in the UK and there are trucks to deliver it too but there are no drivers driving these trucks.

At present, about 27% of fuel stations in the UK are such that their petrol and diesel tanks are completely empty. However, the UK government claims that this situation is slowly improving now.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that he will get the delivery of petrol and diesel from the army personnel but the problem is that it will take at least 5 days to train these soldiers and by then most of the petrol pumps in Britain will have completely dried up.

Apart from this, the UK government has announced to issue temporary visas for 10,000 foreign truck drivers but it is not easy for such a large number of drivers to return to Britain.

Due to the lack of drivers, there was a shortage of goods in the Super Markets of Britain a few days ago and people started buying more and more goods due to the fear of shortage.

The UK Truckers' Union has also said that in the coming times, the price of food items to Christmas gifts will increase because there are not enough drivers to supply even these things.

But this situation is not only in the UK, there is a shortage of qualified drivers driving trucks across Europe. Poland needs 1, 20,000 truck drivers, and Germany needs 60,000 truck drivers immediately.

The situation of Britain tells us that even though a country has been a superpower in history, it cannot be forgotten that the golden period of the past does fade at some point.