Newsinc24 Team 
England is facing accute shortage of truck drivers and the fuel crisis has make the situation worst. To meet the crisi,the British government has extended an emergency visa program for truck drivers as fuel shortages showed few signs of abating particularly in London and the southeast of England. The Conservative government said temporary visas for nearly 5,000 foreign truck drivers it hopes to recruit would run into 2022 instead of expiring on Christmas Eve as originally planned. The short duration of the program announced last week drew widespread criticism for not being attractive enough to entice foreign drivers.The government said 300 fuel drivers would be able to come to the U.K. from overseas immediately and stay through March. Some 4,700 other visas for foreign food truck drivers will last from late October to the end of February.
In another move intended to ease the pressure at Britain’s pumps, around 200 military personnel, including 100 drivers, will be deployed beginning Monday to help to relieve fuel supply shortages that have caused empty pumps and long lines at filling stations. The government says the situation is already improving. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said that there is no national shortage of fuel in the UK and people should continue to buy fuel as normal.
Johnson’s pro-Brexit government is keen to downplay talk that the driver shortage is a result of Britain’s departure from the European Union.However, when the country left the economic orbit of the EU at the start of this year, one of the bloc’s main tenets ceased to apply — the freedom of people to move within the EU to find work. With Brexit, tens of thousands of truck drivers left the U.K. to go back to their homes in the EU, further pressuring an industry already facing long-term staffing issues.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem, prompting thousands of EU drivers to return to their home countries. The U.K.’s tough lockdowns also led to difficulties in training and testing new domestic drivers to replace those who left.In addition, the pandemic accelerated the number of British truck drivers choosing to retire. Relatively low pay, changes in the way that truck drivers’ incomes are taxed and a paucity of facilities — toilets and showers, for example — have also diminished the job’s appeal to younger workers.
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