Bolivian bus and taxi drivers went on strike in several major cities on Tuesday and blocked national roads to protest months-long fuel shortages and declining fuel quality.
Public transport ground to a halt in the cities of La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, Sucre and Oruro as drivers stayed off the road to protest irregular fuel supplies and the sale of degraded fuel blamed for damaging vehicles.
Truck drivers joined in the protests on roads across the country.
The Bolivian Highway Administration counted 70 road blockades.
Drivers say degraded fuel sold in filling stations has damaged the engines of thousands of cars in recent months.
They are demanding compensation from the government of center-right President Rodrigo Paz.
Paz won elections last year that marked a shift to the right after two decades of socialist rule.
He promised to end Bolivia’s worst economic crisis in four decades, marked by an acute shortage of foreign currency and fuel.
Paz scrapped the two-decade-old fuel subsidies that had drained the Treasury’s international dollar reserves but so far has failed to stabilize fuel supplies.