London (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried to reassure the British people that the fuel crisis that plagued the country was “stable” on Tuesday, but his government wasn’t ready for the situation. Said it would take some time.

The Johnson administration has helped distribute gasoline and put troops on standby to mitigate the fuel drought caused by a shortage of truck drivers.

“We are now starting to improve,” Johnson said in a television interview. “In the future, the situation is stable and people need to be confident and do business in the usual way.”

The Gasoline Retailers Association also said there were “early signs” that the fuel crisis was ending.

Many gas stations around the UK have been closed in the last five days after running out of fuel. This situation was exacerbated by the hoarding among some drivers. The open pumps form a long line of vehicles that let you relax after hours of waiting.

The crisis has prompted heat care organizations and teacher groups to prioritize fueling of essential workers.

“When you see a patient, you can’t wait a couple of hours to wait for fuel,” David Wrigley, vice president of the British Medical Association, told Times Radio.

Jeff Burton, secretary-general of the School and University Leaders Association, said the crisis has so far caused concern for educators who are already working on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, but it is a big mess. Said not causing.

“I strongly hope that the situation will be resolved quickly before it causes confusion,” he said. “There are distance learning options that have shown that schools and universities are very proficient in offering through pandemics, but this is a very last resort and they hope it won’t happen. increase.”

Supply problems have caused as many as 100,000 truck drivers due to a complete storm of factors such as the turmoil in pandemic driver training after Britain’s departure from the European Union last year, the aging workforce, and the outflow of foreign workers. Due to the lack of.

There is a shortage of truck drivers in other countries, including the United States and Germany, but this problem is especially noticeable in the United Kingdom, where supermarket shelves are empty and gasoline pumps are closed.

This is partly due to Brexit. The UK’s post-EU immigration rules mean that EU citizens can no longer live and work in the UK without a visa, as they did when the UK was a member of the block.

The British conservative government was reluctant to recognize Brexit as a factor in the fuel crisis. Mr Johnson said the shortage of workers and supplies was the result of a surge in demand as the pandemic eased and the economy revived.

However, the government has also announced that it will issue 5,000 short-term visas to foreign truck drivers to mitigate the crisis towards Christmas. That number is well below what the industry says it needs, and critics claim that a three-month visa is too short to seduce European truck drivers.

Nikolay Rashkov, who runs the family-owned shipping company Eurospeed in Bulgaria, suspects that many Bulgarian drivers will be happy to go to the UK.

“At the beginning of the Millennium, people from Eastern Europe from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria went to the UK and filled the same gap that the UK is currently experiencing,” he said. “But then Brexit came.”

Laškov cited a combination of unwelcome feelings, high British taxes, steep rents and new bureaucracy as deterrents to Eastern European drivers.

“Uncontrolled immigrants” are not the answer to Britain’s problems, said Johnson, a strong supporter of Britain’s exit from the EU.

“We’ve tried it for a long time — 20 years or so, maybe longer,” said the Prime Minister. “And in the end, people could understand that it led to a low-wage, low-skilled approach without sufficient investment in people, equipment and capital.”

A statement aired on his television showed that the government was trying to calm the volatile fuel situation. The government claims that the hoarding has exacerbated the crisis and that people are buying far more gas than usual for fear of shortages.

“The system was just dealing with it until last weekend, and it could have continued to do so,” said Secretary of Transportation Grant Shaps. “Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in toilet paper and the like, when people start pursuing a particular item, it can quickly escalate.”

___

Contributed by Associated Press writer Betherin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria.