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May 31, 2008
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Saturday
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Jamadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429
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European fishermen, truckers protest over rising fuel prices
LONDON, May 30: Spanish fishermen handed out free fish while European truckers and seamen from Portugal to Bulgaria blocked roads and ports on Friday, demanding government action to curb rising fuel prices.
Thailand became the latest Asian state to buckle under pressure, its state-run refineries agreeing to supply cheaper diesel to private bus operators after a day of strikes.
In Madrid, a crowd of mostly elderly men and women scrambled for fish being handed out from the back of two small trucks near the capital’s Fisheries’ Ministry.
The action was designed to show that with fuel prices at their current level, fishermen were practically giving away fish, Javier Garat, secretary-general of fishermen’s union Cepesca said.
“This situation is unsustainable,” said Elias Eijo, 38, one of four brothers who operate a fishing boat in Galicia, on the Atlantic coast of north-western Spain.
He said fuel costs and meagre fish prices driven down by imports meant crew-members wages had plummeted and he and his brothers had no money to repair their boat.
“Right now we’re earning nothing. How do we live? We don’t, that’s why we are here,” he said pointing to the ministry, shrouded in coloured fumes from protesters’ smoke bombs.
Some fishermen threaten to block harbours, as their French counterparts have done. Truck drivers are threatening a strike from June 8 and taxi drivers also plan protests.
More than 100 truck drivers converged into a convoy on a ring road of the Bulgarian capital Sofia on Friday demanding excise duty rebates.
Truckers, farmers and fishermen across Europe have launched protests at the climbing cost of oil. US crude climbed back over $127 a barrel on Friday.
France has called on the Group of Eight industrialised nations to act together to restore oil prices to a lower level, warning that economic growth was under threat.
In Asia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka have raised state-regulated fuel prices, forced into unpopular action by the unsustainable cost of subsidies.—Reuters
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