This is the third day of the strike of trucks and tanks owners that blocked transport and gasoline supply in the country. Many of the gas stations in Greece have already dried up, and those who still avail gasoline put a fuel limit of up to € 50. The difficult situation has led to speculations and the price of gasoline in Janica has reached two euros.
One of the gasoline stations in the metropolitan district Ano Patisiya offers unleaded gasoline for € 1.52. The week before the strike its price was € 1.47 euros. “The tank came early in the morning and there was a queue of about twenty cars lately, but now the situation is calm,” said a gas station worker for GRReporter. If there is not crowd of cars after this supply there may remain gasoline for Thursday, he explained. According to him, the next tank probably will come at the weekend since he was supplied once during the week. The adjacent gas station about three hundred meters away had no fuel and the workers did not know when it will be supplied.
According to statements of the Union of gas stations owners 500 tanks are operating daily in Greece to meet the fuel demand throughout the country. There are only about 40 tanks after the announcement of the strike. They are property of refineries and have no connection with the carriers bound on the base of government procurement.
Representatives of the strikers met with the General Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure to find moderate means for solving the problem. The meeting between the representatives of carriers and the Ministry was inefficient. The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Dimitris Repas stated the supervisors of the tripartite mission of the IMF, the European Commission and the ECB have agreed with the bill for the liberalization of closed professions and no changes will be made. We all must know that the state is neither helpless nor homeless, stated Minister Repas explicitly.
The main victims of the opening of the transport market in the country are around 5500 people, who bought the authorization right to perform transport services in the past two years. The cost of permits varies from € 80,000 to € 120,000 depending on the capacity of the truck or tank.
The three-year transitional period seems short for the owners of trucks and tanks, which is only one of the reasons for the strike. In their opinion, entrepreneurs will not be able to return their investments in this period. Meanwhile, new players, which will beat the price of transport services in general, will begin to enter the market. And the compensations the government proposes also seem inadequate. To take the heat out of the situation, the Ministry proposed one or two additional permissions for trucks and tanks to be issued. Thus, entrepreneurs will be able to compensate the money invested in the permission already issued. This proposal was also rejected.
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