Mexican teachers opposed to an education overhaul partially lifted their blockade of roads in the southern state of Chiapas to allow deliveries of gasoline, state oil company Pemex said Thursday.

The number of service stations in Chiapas without fuel has fallen from 90 to 27, Pemex executive Jorge Martinez told Radio Formula.

Members of Section 7 of the militant CNTE teachers union said Wednesday night that they were lifting the highway blockade in Chiapas for private vehicles, public buses and trucks carrying gasoline and diesel.

The union acted after the state’s business community sounded the alarm about a lack of fuel.

Most of the 207 service stations in neighboring Oaxaca state – also affected by the protests – are functioning normally after a problem involving deliveries from refineries to distribution centers was resolved, Pemex’s Martinez said.

In a related development, the federal government is using military transport planes to ferry food and medicine to areas of Oaxaca that have been cut off by the blockades.

The first flights are set to arrive in the state on Thursday.

The CNTE, which is strongest in Mexico’s poorest states, demands the repeal of the 2013 education “reform,” whose centerpiece is a regime of teacher evaluations.

The union sees the system as punitive because it fails to take into account that many schools in rural areas lack electricity and even basic items such as textbooks.

While talks are under way in Mexico City between the CNTE and the government, the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto continues to insist that the 2013 law is non-negotiable.

Nine people were killed and more than a hundred others wounded on June 19 when police fired on CNTE members and supporters in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca. EFE

Mexico City, Jun 30 (EFE)