Sunday, September 26th 2021
Worry about delivery bottlenecks
London approves thousands of visas for truck drivers
Time and again, shelves remain empty in Great Britain. According to one estimate, around 100,000 truck drivers are missing. So that there is no food shortage during the Christmas business, London is loosening the visa requirements for foreign skilled workers for a short time – and is doing a U-turn.
In view of an acute labor shortage, the British government is temporarily relaxing the visa requirements for foreign truck drivers. The government announced that up to 10,500 temporary work visas will be issued for truck drivers and skilled workers from other key industries such as poultry farming. Because it is estimated that there is a shortage of around 100,000 truck drivers in Great Britain, there had recently been bottlenecks at numerous petrol stations – many Brits made panic buying as a result.
The announcement is a clear departure from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s restrictive immigration policy since leaving the EU. Johnson had repeatedly stressed that he wanted to end Britain’s dependence on foreign labor. Transport Minister Grant Shapps has now announced exceptions to the strict visa rules since Brexit. The temporary work visas should therefore be issued from October and apply until December.
Corona pandemic and Brexit exacerbate shortages
Shapps also announced a package of measures to increase the number of local truck drivers in the short term. Among other things, driving examiners from the Ministry of Defense are to help out in order to be able to offer additional driving tests in the next twelve weeks. The Ministry of Education is supposed to help with training. In addition, almost a million letters are to be sent to drivers who have a truck driver’s license but are not currently driving.
The corona pandemic and Brexit had massively exacerbated the shortage of truck drivers in Great Britain. In addition to the shortage of petrol, there were also problems with food deliveries. In many supermarkets shelves remained empty, leading supermarket chains warned of a food shortage before Christmas. Johnson’s government was therefore under massive pressure to act. Long queues formed again at many gas stations in the country on Saturday. “I just want to refuel to get to work. People just fill up canisters – it’s ridiculous,” said 56-year-old Mike Davey as he waited in front of a gas pump in Kent in the south of England.