COLOMBO (Reuters) – Doctors and bankers were among hundreds of Sri Lankans who marched on Wednesday to demand the government resolve a severe fuel shortage at the heart of the Indian Ocean island’s worst economic crisis in decades or step down.
Weeks of street demonstrations against cascading woes such as power cuts and shortages of food and medicine brought a change in government last month after nine people were killed and about 300 injured in protests.
Left with just enough fuel for about a week and fresh shipments at least two weeks away, the government restricted supplies on Tuesday to essential services, such as trains, buses and the health sector, for two weeks.
The prime minister’s office said in a statement a government-ordered petrol shipment would arrive on July 22, while Lanka IOC, a unit of Indian Oil Corporation, is expecting a shipment of petrol and diesel around July 13.
“The government is also attempting to secure fuel shipments at an early date. However, until those are confirmed, the details would not be released,” the statement said.
Doctors, nurses and medical staff say that despite being designated essential workers, they struggle to find enough fuel to get to work.
“This is an impossible situation, the government has to give us a solution,” H.M. Mediwatta, secretary of one of Sri Lanka’s largest nursing unions, the All Island Nurses Union, told reporters.
The South Asian nation’s most serious economic crisis since independence in 1948 comes after Covid-19 battered the tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from overseas workers.
Rising oil prices, populist tax cuts and a seven-month ban on the import of chemical fertilizers last year that devastated agriculture have compounded the troubles.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said the World Bank had agreed to restructure 17 projects it is funding in Sri Lanka. Similar support extended earlier had been used to buy fuel and medicine.