GOVERNMENT efforts to ease the transport sector’s driver shortage crisis with extended driving hours and ‘very limited’ exemptions to current Covid-19 self-isolation rules have been met with short shrift.
Both Logistics UK and RHA dismissed the drivers’ hours extension as ineffective and condemned the limited response to the ‘pingdemic’ that has seen many lorry drivers forced to isolate.
Elizabeth de Jong, policy director at Logistics UK, said government should be ‘providing a blanket exemption for the industry’.
However, government response to criticism has been robust. Transport minister Baroness Vere said extending drivers’ hours was ‘not a long-term solution’ but added that it was ‘time for the industry to step up just a little more’.
Separately, strike action is being organised by a Facebook group named ‘HGV drivers on STRIKE United Kingdom’, which last month had over 3,500 members. Meanwhile RHA chief executive Richard Burnett warned that the UK is facing the collapse of the supply chain before the next issue of Transport News goes to press!
• For potential driver shortage solutions go to page 14.
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