The government in London looks increasingly desperate in its efforts to end the bottlenecks at UK petrol pumps. An appeal to Germans who already live in the country seems bizarre.
With an unusual appeal to Germans in Great Britain and the use of the military, the government in London wants to get the persistent fuel shortage at British filling stations under control.
Almost 200 members of the armed forces, including 100 truck drivers, are to provide “temporary” support from Monday, the government seat Downing Street announced.
A desperate letter campaign caused astonishment among Germans in the country, in which apparently indiscriminate people with appropriate driver’s licenses were asked to get behind the wheel of a truck – even if they had never done this before.
Because class 3 driving licenses, which were issued in Germany up to 1999, also allow driving a truck up to 7.5 tons, according to a report by the Independent, thousands of Germans received corresponding letters.
The UK Department of Transportation said the letter had been sent to nearly a million people with truck drivers’ licenses. For data protection reasons, it was impossible to filter the list of recipients more precisely by occupation.
Completely new “job perspectives”
“It’s nice to know that there are still job prospects for us after Brexit,” said a 41-year-old German who lives with his wife in London, the “Independent”. “If we had gone to Germany, we would probably never have been recruited as truck drivers by headhunters.” For now, however, he wants to keep his job at an investment bank, and his wife has never driven a bigger car than a Volvo and will probably turn down the “exciting opportunity”.
There was also outrage that the letters were reportedly sent to thousands of emergency services and fire services in the country. This is despite the fact that terrifying statistics on waiting times for emergency admissions are published again and again.
Many gas stations are closed
In Great Britain there have been extreme bottlenecks at many petrol stations for more than a week. Many are closed. Long lines form at the rest. In some parts of the country, the situation is said to have improved. According to a large petrol station association, this does not apply to London and the south-east.
While the situation in Scotland, the north of England and parts of the Midlands has improved, in the south it has “at best gotten worse,” said the head of the Petrol Retailers Association, Brian Madderson, the BBC.
The government also expanded temporary visa facilitations for foreign truck drivers. Up to 300 drivers from abroad should receive immediate work visas, which should be valid until March. So far, the government had tried to attract 5,000 potential applicants from abroad with temporary visas to the island from the end of October until Christmas.
Fear of worsening
It is feared that the bottlenecks at petrol stations and partially empty supermarket shelves are just the beginning of a whole series of shortages in the UK that could worsen significantly by Christmas.
The country is not only short of an estimated 100,000 truck drivers, but also thousands of workers in slaughterhouses and farms. Temporary visas are to be issued for people in the poultry industry so that the British do not have to do without their turkey at Christmas.
The background to the shortage of skilled workers is, among other things, the UK’s exit from the EU and tightening of entry rules. Many truck drivers from Eastern Europe who left the country during the pandemic have probably been permanently lost to the British labor market. The government rejected demands to make the immigration of skilled workers easier in principle. Companies just have to pay better salaries, so the argument goes.
According to the industry, the situation in Germany is also serious. According to estimates, there is a shortage of 60,000 to 80,000 drivers in Germany, said Dirk Engelbrecht, General Manager of the Federal Association of Freight Transport, Logistics and Disposal, recently on Deutschlandfunk. The industry lacks the next generation. “In Germany around 30,000 professional drivers retire every year, but only 15,000 new ones are trained. We slide into a creeping supply collapse. “
The biggest problems are insufficient wages, the image of the profession and the traffic situation. But the compatibility of work with private and family life is also a minus point.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
