UK faced a severe labor shortage after Brexit and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It wreaked havoc in some sectors of the economy, disrupting fuel and drug supplies and leaving more than 100,000 pigs on farms.
Shortage in truck drivers even caused pressure on supply chains, panic buying, fighting at gas stations and drivers stocking up fuel in water bottles.
Government officials argued for days that the crisis is nearly over, but retailers said more than 2,000 gas stations remain empty. Local reports also said dozens of pumps were still closed, so queues of angry drivers crept towards gas stations that are still open in London.
Ata Uriakhil, a 47-year-old taxi driver, was outraged that the country was completely unprepared for anything. "When is it going to end?," he said. "The politicians are not capable of doing their jobs properly. The government should have been prepared for this crisis. It is just incompetence."
Uriakhil disclosed that he lost about 20% of his usual weekly earnings because he was waiting for fuel rather than picking up customers.
As an explanation to this situation, UK officials said the world is facing a global shortage of truck drivers and that they are working to ease the crisis. They deny that the cause was the massive exodus of workers from the EU after the UK's exit from the bloc. They also dismissed fears of impending winter shortages and power outages.
On a different note, the Conservative government slightly changed its stance on immigrant workers this week, allowing some foreign workers to come for three months to drive trucks and fill gaps in the poultry sector.
But Opposition Labor leader Keir Starmer said the government is not moving fast enough.
Nevertheless, army drivers are undergoing training, and Sky News said they could be deployed as early as Monday to assist with fuel delivery.
In addition to the chaos around gas stations, farmers warn that a shortage of butchers and slaughterhouse workers could lead to the culling of tens of thousands of pigs.
The pig industry pleaded with retailers to keep buying local pork rather than cheaper products from the EU, stating that businesses would go bankrupt and livestock destroyed if producers were not immediately supported.
Weekly slaughter of pigs dropped by 25% since August, after Brexit and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Regulations over UK immigration also hit the meat processing industry, which already suffered from labor shortages.
The National Pig Association said that despite attempts to persuade the government to ease immigration rules, the situation appears to be deadlocked.