Truck drivers in Mexico block major highways to protest the government's failure to pay bills
Truck drivers have blocked some major highways in central Mexico to protest the fact the government hasn't paid them for work they did on a tourist train line
MEXICO CITY — Truck drivers blocked some major highways in central Mexico on Tuesday to protest that the government hasn’t paid them for work they did on a tourist train line.
The protest by truckers blocked two major highways leading north out of Mexico City for a few hours Tuesday morning, and other highways on the Yucatan Peninsula, where they had worked carrying gravel and other materials for the government's Maya Train project.
President Claudia Sheinbaum acknowledged Tuesday that the subcontractor companies that hired the truck drivers hadn't paid them because the government owed them money.
“The payments to the companies have started, so that they, in turn, can pay the truck drivers,” Sheinbaum said.
It was the latest in a series of complaints by workers and businessmen who said the cash-strapped government has fallen behind in payments.
Mexico’s federal government is running big budget deficits to pay for ambitious pet projects and entitlement programs from the previous administration.
Last month, suppliers and contractors for the state-owned oil company published an open letter saying they hadn’t been paid $5 billion for work they had done.
“This situation… has caused adverse affects on our finances and on the regions where we work,” the Mexican Association of Petroleum Services Companies wrote in the letter.
Under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was Sheinbaum’s political mentor, the government began transferring large amounts of money to the state-run Pemex oil company, started large building projects and implemented cash handout
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