(Please note strong language in paragraph 3)
By Ben Makori and Gerhard Mey
DOVER, England (Reuters) – Dan Jinca, a Romanian truck driver stranded in England after much of the world shut its borders to Britain, is angry, and he is not alone.
The 47-year-old will miss Christmas at home and he thinks the official excuse for the border closures – a new variant of the novel coronavirus spreading fast across southern England – is nonsense.
“We are upset and we don’t know why we have to be in this situation,” Jinca told Reuters, speaking English. “They say it is about corona. We don’t know. We think … it is bullshit, big, big bullshit.”
Hundreds of trucks are lined up, snaking into the horizon across southern England after the border closures. Many drivers have been stuck for days, eating up their reserves of food along roads that now stand silent.
No matter what is decided in London, Paris and Brussels, Jinca, a father, will miss Christmas at home in Bumbești-Jiu, about 186 miles (300 km) west of Bucharest, because he has too far to drive.
“Now it is done, it is finished. From here to go home we have about 2,000 miles,” he said. “It is about 45 hours to drive non-stop – no sleep, just drive. We can’t make it.”
After 7 years in trucking, it has never happened to him before.
Sergio Robles, a 41-year-old Spanish truck driver, said the conditions – stuck on a road in December for three days and counting – were a disgrace.
And he wants a solution – and information – fast.
“They don’t give us food, they don’t give us drinks, they don’t give us sanitation, they don’t offer us anything,” he said in Spanish. “The situation is basically inhumane, so what we are asking for is a solution.”
“I think and believe that this happening now isn’t due to coronavirus or anything, it’s due to Brexit, due to internal politics or something of that manner.”
Robles will also miss Christmas with his family in Madrid.
“We are the transport that moves the world, so to say. And they treat us badly,” he said.
“They treat us as if we are garbage. We don’t get to spend Christmas at home, not with family or children or anything. I think there’s nothing right in all of this.”
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
