Faced with shortages, London could reach out, and visas, to foreign truck drivers

A long queue in front of a service station in the United Kingdom. In recent days, a wind of panic has blown over the country, faced with food shortages but also fuel. The cause is the lack of truck drivers to deliver stores or petrol stations Since Brexit there are fewer foreign drivers.

“There is a political context in this case, says Rod McKenzie of the Road Transport Association, but you also have to make sure that people in Britain get their food and fuel, and in the political context of Brexit, it seems to me that the government should accept that in fact in the short term we need to foreign drivers to help us.

There is an estimated shortage of 100,000 foreign heavy truck drivers caused by the pandemic and Brexit.

“Over the yearssaid Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport, we accepted a situation where cheaper labor, often from Eastern Europe, came in, broke the market and therefore drove a lot of truck drivers out of this business. __We must therefore be careful not to exacerbate the problems in the future. Nonetheless, I accept that in the short term we are looking at all the different options and that is what we are doing in a very proactive way. “

The British government is therefore preparing to temporarily relax the visa rules in order to attract more foreign truck drivers: 5,000 visas will be issued, a decision that goes against the London credo: end the Kingdom’s dependence. -United vis-à-vis foreign labor.

Reference-feedproxy.google.com

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