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ARCHIVED - Murcia truckers face huge delays in the UK
Transport workers from Murcia have been sitting for hours in tailbacks at British ports
No sooner has the transport strike in Spain, which left shops and service stations dangerously low in stock and caused untold disruption across the country, been resolved, but carriers from the Region of Murcia have been left stranded in the UK, facing delays of more than a day.
During the past week, truckers from Murcia had to endure waits of up to 36 hours at the British port of Dover, unable to cross the English Channel. Official sources report that there were queues of up to 50 kilometres along the highways leading to the Eurotunnel, and trucks heading to the French port of Calais to embark for the UK faced similar disruptions.
After the initial exodus of Easter travellers abated, the situation for Murcian carriers has improved this week, and the wait times to depart from Britain have been reduced to around four hours, with tailbacks of around 20 kilometres still clogging up the roads.
Vehicles from companies such as Fuentes and Primafrio from the Region of Murcia have reported huge delays.
The British government has blamed the collapse mainly on shipping company P&O, which has temporarily stopped operating many of the ferries that connect the UK and Europe after laying off 800 employees to cut costs. Added to this are the ongoing problems with the computer systems at customs, which were implemented after Brexit and have considerably slowed the entire process down.
The massive delays of recent days have prompted the British government to launch Operation Brock, a traffic management system designed to deal with bottlenecks at Dover.
That scenario has coincided with the usual increase in traffic at the start of the April holidays and with a new increase in coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom, which has also hit airlines and other sectors. Last week, easyJet and British Airways were forced to cancel hundreds of flights due to the number of staff off sick with Covid.
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