LONDON (F) – The British government has extended an emergency visa program for truck drivers as fuel shortages showed little sign of slowing down Saturday in London and southeastern England.
In an announcement late Friday, the Conservative government said transit visas for some 5,000 foreign truckers it hopes to recruit will last until the end of February or expire on Christmas Eve as originally planned.
The short duration of the show announced last week has sparked widespread complaints about being attractive enough to attract foreign drivers.
The government said three hundred fuel drivers can arrive in the UK from “immediately” and stay until March. Another 4,700 visas for foreign food truck drivers will last from late October to late February.
In some other move to ease the strain at the pumps, about two hundred army troops, totaling a hundred drivers, will be deployed starting Monday to ease fuel shortages that have caused pumps to empty and long lines at gas stations.
The government says it is already improving.
“UK inventory levels tend to rise, fuel deliveries to filling stations are above general levels and fuel demand is stabilising,” trade secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said. “It is vital to emphasise that there is no national fuel shortage in the UK, and other people continue to buy fuel as usual.
However, the Gasoline Retailers Association, which represents independent gas stations, warned that the fuel source remains a challenge and may worsen in some places.
“In London and the south-east, and in parts of eastern England, if anything had gotten worse,” the group’s chairman, Brian Madderson, told BBC radio.
Madderson welcomed the deployment of army drivers next week, but warned it would have an impact.
“It’s possibly not the main panacea,” he said. It’s a wonderful help, but in terms of volume, they may not be able to contribute as much. “
Opposition parties are urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to withdraw parliament next week to deal with the wider scenario of labour shortages and supply chain disruptions.
In recent months, many corporations have reported shortages, adding fast food chains KFC, McDonald’s and Nando’s. Supermarket shelves also looked sterile and fears grew that they would not be stocked as soon as Christmas approached.
In a bid to reduce the shortage of Christmas turkeys, the government has also announced that a total of 5,500 foreign poultry employees will be able to enter the UK from the end of October and stay until the end of the year.
Johnson’s pro-Brexit government is keen to downplay rumours that the driving force of the shortage is the result of Britain’s exit from the European Union.
However, when the country left the EU’s economic orbit earlier this year, one of the bloc’s main principles ceased to apply: the freedom of other people to move within the EU to find work. Britain will return to the EU, putting more pressure on an industry already facing long-term staffing issues.
The coronavirus pandemic has compounded the problem, leading thousands of European drivers to return to their home countries. The series of lockdowns in the UK has also led to difficulties in education and testing new domestic drivers to update those who have left.
In addition, the pandemic has accelerated the number of UK drivers opting to retire. Relatively low wages, adjustments in the way truck drivers’ income is taxed, and a lack of amenities (toilets and showers, for example) have also reduced the attractiveness of paintings to young painters.
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