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Drivers kick
Page 16
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lip a storm
it Felixstowe
ligh winds and labour shortages re stretching turnaround times at
elixstowe. Chris Tindall reports.
FLAYS AND CONGESTION the port of Felixstowe have msened to the extent that one ierator claims he is losing a day a ek in business and fears for his mpany's profitability.
The haulier says a series of rind-offs" over the past three ;eks, when the port is closed due high winds, are leading to turnaend times of six hours, even when ring to load early in the morning. .t claims the port told him the Jblems are labour-related.
"The port is currently putting uliers out of business," he says. :'s being heavily disrupted by winds, but they say a there's a lack of labour to man the machinery. The concern is, what the hell are they going to do when the WorkingTime Directive starts?The port can't physically deal with it."
Keith Richardson, who used to work at Felixstowe and now works at the Orwell Crossing Lorry Park just a few miles away,is sympathetic to the operators. "You can't control the wind," he says. "But you have congestion there for one or two days and you should be able to sort it out. But it goes on and on.
"It was a good place to work," he adds, "but it's a shambles now. It's worse than it's ever been."
However, a port spokesman denies there is a labour shortage and says January and February are traditionally bad months in terms of delays caused by high winds.
"Since September we have been fully staffed," he points out. "We aim for 40-minute average turnaround times and recently we have been doing fairly well on that. It's a safety issue and we don't compromise on safety."
• Angry truck drivers at Liverpool container terminal claim they demanded a meeting with port management after experiencing lengthy delays but were told the port bosses didn't have time to listen to them.
Arthur Rigby from H Rigby Road Haulage says he has queued for more than three hours every day over the past week: "We are not expecting miracles. I simply asked the management if we could meet to discuss the problems but he said that he hasn't got time to listen to hauliers."
A Port of Liverpool spokesman claims that the delays were due to a computer failure, which led to the port reverting to a manual booking-in system.