United Kingdom will grant up to 5,000 visas temporarily to attract foreign truckers, before the growing scarcity due to pandemic and Brexit, estimated at 100,000 drivers, which now affects the British media on Saturday.
This measure exhibits a radical change of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, whose government has hardened the immigration rules after the departure of the country of the European Union and reiterated the need to end the dependence on labor from abroad.
However, the shortages caused by the lack of drivers, who hit the agri-food sector, but also the energy, causing the closure of several gas stations, have pushed the executive to take action.
In recent days, huge queues have been formed in front of gasoline pumps, where British who ignore government appeals to calm are being supplied with fuel.
“I just want to refuel to go to work. People are filling drums, it’s ridiculous,” Mike Davey, a 56-year-old driver who has been waiting for more than half an hour at a service station in Kent, southeast of London.
In front of the increase in the queues, Downing Street pointed out on Friday that the government “was considering temporary measures to avoid immediate problems.”
Any measure would be “very strictly limited in time”, underlined a Johnson spokesman, at the same time as he assured that the country has “broad fuel tanks” and that “there is no shortage”.
An affirmation that left the skeptical drivers on Saturday morning.
“Maybe they should bring some army drivers,” suggests Davey.
In fact, several appeals have been made to deploy soldiers to help distribute gasoline or cope with the accumulation of permissions requests from driving heavy vehicles, which increased during the pandemic.