The spanish truckers have started denouncing economic losses that has caused them to be trapped for more than 24 hours in United Kingdom -together with other European carriers-, in queues of more than 50 kilometers on the motorway that gives access to the Channel Tunnel and the embarkation ports. As a result of this situation they have had to modify their routes after having lost jobs on the continent.
The National Federation of Transport Associations of Spain (Fenadismer) blamed the British authorities last Friday for their “negligent action” and has demanded the immediate intervention of the European Commission to solve this problem, which began as a result of Brexit.
😡But is this happening in the UK🇬🇧 admissible in the 21st century?
You can consent to having thousands of #carriers that they only work to feed the population and that the factories can function in this situation of contempt and abandonment?#BlockedCarriersUK pic.twitter.com/v1HXuePRwT— FENADISMER (@fenadismer) April 8, 2022
In a video published on the federation’s Twitter account, Javier, an autonomous haulier from Granada traveling through England, affirms that the “row of trucks on one side and the other” goes from the London exit to Folkestone and the port of Dover . “They have not given us any explanation for these delays, nor for these kilometric queues. You are already seeing that it has become an Odyssey to come to England”, he explains.
At the time of the video recording, he had been trapped in the queue for more than twelve hours. The same truck driver reported having lost “a load that he had in Paris” due to the day’s delay. To the loss of work is added the extra kilometers that he will have to cover due to the changes in the route as a result of the stoppage suffered in the United Kingdom, he narrates in statements to TVE.
The president of the Transport and Logistics Guild, integrated into the Cecot employers’ association, Antonio Martínez, has assured that there have been cases in which unemployed for more than a week and has expressed concern, both for the personal situation of the carriers and “for the state and security of the cargo, which is beginning to be critical, and it would be necessary to speed up the response” of the British authorities.
The union assures that they are daily queues of more than 30 kilometers that have caused waits of more than ten hours with vehicles stopped on the shoulders -without places of rest with “minimum hygienic and sanitary conditions”-, as it happened on christmas 2020 coinciding with the Brexit implementation.
The “nightmare” of 2020
In the same way, the Spanish employers of carriers have expressed their fear that, at the gates of Holy Week, repeat the “nightmare” situation that Spanish carriers and the rest of the European Union countries suffered at Christmas 2020. “Carriers must remain trapped inside trucks, without being able to access adequate resting places or with minimum hygienic-sanitary conditions”, added Fenadismer.
The association recalled that the British authorities promised to work on a solutionhowever, “far from it, it has been getting worse in recent days”, considering that “they have not yet done anything to remedy it.”
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