Sikh charity delivers Dominor’s pizzas and curries to stranded lorry drivers

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Lorry drivers stranded in Kent for the past three days have told MailOnline of their heartache today at missing out on Christmas Day with their families amid the ongoing border chaos.

Thousands of drivers from countries including Hungary, Slovenia and Romania are likely to spend Christmas stuck in the UK after the Government indicated queues outside Dover will not move for at least another 24 hours.

It comes as a group of Sikh volunteers tried to the raise the spirits of the stranded drivers with a delivery of 1,000 Domino’s pizzas last night, while relief has also been provided by the Salvation Army and a local football club.

Lorry driver Doma Dumitru, 41, had been hoping to spend tomorrow with his wife Alina, 40, and their 12-year-old daughter Daria Maria back home at Oradea in north-west Romania. He has been stuck in Dover since Monday after France closed its border with Britain following the emergence of the new highly infectious strain of coronavirus.

Mr Dumitru said: ‘Normally at Christmas time I’d be with my whole family, my wife, daughter, my mother, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews but this year I’m going to be trapped here in England. 

‘It’s not good, not good at all but this is the perils of the job. I don’t want to be here sleeping in my lorry for a fourth night but there isn’t anything I can do. I miss my wife and daughter, I’ve spoken to them on the phone but it isn’t the same.

‘There’s no way that I will reach Romania on Christmas Day, I’ve already warned them about that. They know that this can happen with the type of work I do but it’s still very hard to be away from them at this time of year.’

Thousands of lorries were today still clogging the A20 route into Dover right up to the entrance of the Port.

France agreed to open the border again on Tuesday night but insisted that anyone travelling into the country must first take a lateral flow test which detects the new strain of Covid-19 and provides results in around 30 minutes, rather than the 24 hours required after a PCR test.

A testing site has been set up at Manston Airfield, 18 miles from Dover, but the 10,000 drivers who parked up in the town causing two-mile tailbacks and traffic gridlock had been unable to reach it.

NHS staff and army personnel were later dispatched to start testing 30 vehicles at a time at the Port of Dover but the process is proving to be slower than expected.

Andik Jozsef, 47, from Csokonyavisonta in Hungary is parked more than a mile from the front of the queue at Dover. He has told wife Bernadett, 46, son Daniel, 22 and daughter Kristof, 15 that he won’t be home for Christmas.

Mr Jozsef, who is transporting steel from a factory in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire to Hungary, said: There is no chance that I will get to see my family, there are 6,000 vehicles still to be tested and it’s Christmas Eve. 

‘The testing is going very slowly, I thought it would be quicker, so I’m going to be in my lorry for Christmas Day, there’s no doubt about that.

‘I want to spend the festivities with my wife, son and daughter at home in comfort not here on a cold road filled with other lorries honking their horns all the time.

‘I think France is to blame – they are being awkward on purpose because of the Brexit negotiations with the UK but it’s us who are having to pay the price.’

Ivo Ivic, 57, who is transporting chemicals used in building foam from Runcorn in Cheshire to Slovenia, had been looking forward to spending tomorrow with his grandsons Timotes, aged eight and two-year-old Lucian.

He had planned a Christmas meal with wife Ankica, 56, son Jure, 37, and daughter Sama, 38 at home in Vrhnika, Slovenia.

But, shaking his head, Mr Ivic said: ‘There’s no way that I’m going to be able to see them until Christmas is over. Instead I’m going to still be here in my lorry only a little nearer to the port, the way things are going.

‘I was hoping to see my grandsons open their presents but it’s just not going to happen. Christmas is a time to be with your family but I’m going to be on my own this year. Hopefully I can get across to France as soon as possible and just get home before New Year.’ 

Volunteers from the Sikh organisation Khalsa Aid coordinated a series of pizza deliveries yesterday having already provided hundreds of chickpea curries to the stranded motorists a day earlier. 

The group from Maidenhead travelled over 80 miles to help out, while some of its Langar Aid members journeyed more than 150 miles from Coventry.

Volunteers from the Guru Nanak Darbar temple in Gravesend cooked the meals, while staff from the Salvation Army’s South East Division were also helping to deliver food. Ramsgate Football Club was involved too, delivering 200 pizzas to the drivers.  

Ravinder Singh, founder of Khalsa Aid which is based in Maidenhead, said: ‘We in Sikhism, we have the concept of langar, which means community kitchen.

‘We are British Sikhs and the least we can do is to practise our seasonal goodwill: two days from Christmas we have people on our soil who are homeward bound and do not know what is happening.’

Many truck drivers have been eating through their last provisions on the side of the road with some of the 6,000 lorries having been parked on the A2 since Sunday.

Mr Singh added: ‘To see a solitary truck driver in his cabin on a horrible wet evening on the side of the motorway, it drives you to do more for them. 

‘They were very appreciative but you could see they were down as they were unsure if they would get home for Christmas.’

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the lorries will begin moving on Christmas Day, as French firemen and the British military work with NHS Test and Trace to continue testing drivers.

Hauliers must return a negative coronavirus result carried out within the past 72 hours before crossing the Channel.

The head of the Road Haulage Association has accused France of treating drivers like ‘pawns in a larger game’ as the UK stands on the cusp of brokering a deal with the EU – an allegation the French have repeatedly denied.

Richard Burnett sympathised with the hauliers, a small number of whom clashed with police this week after being stopped from heading to the continent, adding: ‘It just feels like it’s a lever the French have pulled specifically around the Brexit negotiations.’

He told the BBC: ‘We understand that we don’t want the virus to spread but I think we have to think practically about some of the reasons why this has happened.’

Mr Burnett added he was ‘relieved’ hauliers would be able to move after French authorities demanded a negative test following the emergence of a new more transmissible coronavirus strain in the UK, but added it would ‘take some time’ to clear the backlog.

He added lorry drivers’ rates of coronavirus infection are much lower than those of workers in other sectors, at between 3 and 6 per cent. 

Mr Shapps said France and the UK had agreed to keep the border open at Dover, the Eurotunnel and Calais ‘throughout Christmas’ to get citizens and hauliers cleared ‘as soon as possible’.

He promised ferries will sail on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, as 26 French firemen brought 10,000 extra tests to the port on Thursday to help speed up the process. 

He said on Twitter: ‘As well as ensuring ferries will now sail on Christmas and Boxing Day, we’ve also got great cooperation by French firemen working with NHS Test and Trace and our brilliant military in a big effort to clear the backlog created by the French border closure.’

France’s ambassador to the UK Catherine Colonna added that the two countries were ‘neighbours, partners, allies and (yes) friends’.

A disused airfield at Manston has become the main testing centre for hauliers, with drivers required to self-administer swabs in their cabs under supervision.

Trucks began entering the Eurotunnel again on Wednesday after drivers started producing negative Covid-19 results, but it is feared it could take days to carry out all the tests.

Around 170 military personnel, including from 36 Engineer Regiment and 1 Irish Guards, are assisting with testing.

Battle to get truckers home: French firemen join fight to ease backlog of 6,000 lorries but THEY insist on personally doing Covid tests – while British testers allow far less effective self swabs

French firefighters armed with 10,000 testing kits have today joined the battle to help thousands of stranded lorry drivers across the Channel – with up to 6,000 lorries now stacked up in Kent.

A group of 26 firefighters from the continent have joined the UK’s testing effort, personally administering the swabs to lorry drivers after President Emmanuel Macron demanded truckers be tested before crossing into France.

Around 100 NHS staff and 170 Armed Forces personnel are leading the UK’s testing drive today, aiming to swab hundreds of truckers per hour in a bid to clear the backlog.

Unlike the French firefighters, the British testing teams are passing the swabs to the lorry drivers to self-administer – a method considered less effective in a recent study by Oxford University. The study found the accuracy of rapid Covid testing kits fell from 79 per cent when used by experts to 58 per cent when carried out by people without any training.

Tweeting about the support effort today, French ambassador to the UK, Catherine Colonna, said: ‘A team of 26 firefighter arrived early this morning at Dover with 10,000 tests COVID-19 and help the teams on the port to speed up the passage of truckers to the mainland. Well done! Good co-operation.’ 

It comes as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today announced ferries and Eurostar services between Dover and Calais will run over Christmas in a bid to end the backlog. He said last night he hoped it could be cleared ‘by New Year’. Others have also warned the backlog could take days to sort out.

Today the head of the Road Haulage Association – who claim there could be as many as 10,000 lorries at the border – accused France of treating drivers like ‘pawns in a larger game’ as the UK stands on the cusp of brokering a deal with the EU. It is an allegation the French have repeatedly denied. 

Lorries have been stacking-up on the M20 and in Marston Airfield in Kent since Sunday, when France slammed shut the border after the identification of a new mutant strain of Covid-19 in the UK.

Any driver who wishes to cross the Channel must now provide a negative lateral flow test within 72 hours of departure. The lorry drivers who test positive will be taken to a Covid secure hotel to quarantine.

Meanwhile, a group of Sikh volunteers have tried to the raise the spirits of the the thousands of lorry drivers stranded in Kent with a delivery of 1,000 Domino’s pizzas amid the ongoing border chaos.

It comes after tensions boiled over yesterday in Kent as frustrated lorry drivers, who had been stuck at the border for days, waited to get a positive test.

One Polish lorry driver has told how he had to make the heartbreaking call to his pregnant wife and daughters telling them he was unlikely to make it home for Christmas, and would instead be spending it in his cab stuck on the A20 in Dover.

Wojtek Golawski is one of thousands of truckers stranded in Kent and facing disappointment over the festive season, with just 200 tests an hour being carried out on Wednesday.

There was then more confusion as it emerged that testing on Jubilee Way, the main route into the Port of Dover, was shut down last night before 10pm.  

The Department for Transport insists the immediate priority has been to clear the main backlog of vehicles along that road, that testing would resume there today, and that a 24/7 operation was also in force at Manston Airport, where thousands are parked up, and on the M20 motorway.

A spokesman added that the absence of testers in Dover overnight would not prevent access to the port, while the number of drivers tested each hour on Thursday is expected to ramp up to 500 or 600, with officials looking to set up ten mobile testing units for truckers stuck in queues.   

Police have finally started letting drivers into the Port of Dover to be tested for coronavirus and, if negative, they can begin their journeys home.

Around 6,000 lorries, 4,000 at Manston Airfield and 2,000 on the M20, are said to be waiting to cross the Channel. Lorries are also parked in and around Dover, in streets and laybys. Highways England has warned all drivers – including hauliers – to avoid travelling to Kent until further notice due to continued cross-channel disruption.

Grant Shapps last night said he was unsure at how long it would take to clear the backlog, but said he hoped it would be sorted ‘by New Year’. Today he tweeted that ferry and Eurostar services between Dover and Calais would continue over Christmas to help ease the backlog.

He said: ‘As testing in Kent continues (latest figures & outcomes soon) I’ve spoken to my French counterpart & we’ve agreed the UK/French border at Eurotunnel, Dover & Calais WILL remain open throughout Xmas in order to help hauliers & citizens return home as soon as possible.

‘As well as ensuring ferries will now sail on Christmas & Boxing Day, we’ve also got great cooperation by French firemen working with NHS Test & Trace and our brilliant military in a big effort to clear the backlog created by the French border closure.’ 

Dover MP Natalie Elphicke also said testing was ‘well underway’, but warned it could ‘take days’ to clear the backlog.

In a tweet, the Conservative MP said: ‘Lorries are now leaving from Dover. Will continue sailings on Christmas and Boxing Day to help with the backlog.

‘Huge thanks to all ferry, military & emergency crews who are making this happen. Testing well underway, but will take days to clear.’ 

Meanwhile, lorry driver Wojtek, from Lukow in Poland, said he had travelled to Britain on Sunday with pallets full of clothes, which he delivered to a depot in Nottingham. Like thousands of other delivery drivers, the 34-year-old has been stuck in Kent since the weekend. 

Wojtek is parked a mile and a half from the front of the queue and so will almost certainly not make it back home in time to see his two girls aged three and five open their presents.

He said: ‘It’s a horrible situation and it shouldn’t have got to this, I think it’s France trying to flex their muscles before Brexit.

‘But it means that I’m not going to make it home to my daughters and to my wife, who is seven months pregnant.

‘I had to make a very tough phone call to her earlier this evening to say that the problems in England meant I would have to miss Christmas this year.

‘She and the girls were very upset and so was I. It’s going to be depressing celebrating it on my own in the same lorry cab I’ve spent the last two nights sleeping in.

‘But this is what’s happening and I have to accept it. Even if I make the ferry to France tomorrow, it’s still a huge drive.

‘Miracles do happen, especially at this time of year, but I think I’ll be in England for a few more days at least.’

One driver at the front of the queue Catana Florian, who had transported 20 dogs and six cats rescued from the streets of Bucharest to new homes in Britain, was hoping to make it back to Romania to see his wife and seven-year-old daughter.

He had made drop offs in Kent, Peterborough, Norwich and Colchester but had got stuck in Dover when the French closed the border.

The 45-year-old was hoping to get on a Calais-bound ferry to make the 28-hour drive home to Craiova.

He said: ‘I’ve made people’s Christmases by delivering them a new family pet – now I’m hoping the British and French authorities can make mine.

‘Myself and a colleague have been sleeping in the back of our van since Sunday and I’m now wearing old clothes again as I have no fresh ones.

‘We’ve been waiting such a long time to go home and now at last it looks like we are going to making the ferry at last as long as we test negative for Covid.

‘It’s cold and wet and I just want to see my wife and little girl again and be there with them for the big day.

‘As long as there’s no more hold-ups we should make it, that would be the best gift of all.’

Filipe Mayo, a truck driver from Portugal who has been waiting to cross into Calais for four days, told BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme: ‘At the moment I’m stuck inside my truck.

‘There are two lanes, one in the left and one in the right to the tunnel and shuttle.

‘The right side where I am right now goes directly to Dover.

‘They stop us right now, nothing Is happening. We are just waiting for the instructions of the police who sometimes knock the door of the truck and say look forward and wait. 

‘And that’s it for basically the last five hours. We are waiting for the coronavirus tests so nobody really knows how much time it’s going to take to get the test, so we are just waiting in the road.’

Today, Richard Burnett, head of the Road Haulage Association, said he sympathised with the hauliers, a small number of whom clashed with police this week after being stopped from heading to the continent, adding: ‘It just feels like it’s a lever the French have pulled specifically around the Brexit negotiations.’

He told the BBC: ‘We understand that we don’t want the virus to spread but I think we have to think practically about some of the reasons why this has happened.’

Mr Burnett added he was ‘relieved’ hauliers would be able to move after French authorities demanded a negative test following the emergence of a new more transmissible coronavirus strain in the UK, but added it would ‘take some time’ to clear the backlog.

He added lorry drivers’ rates of coronavirus infection are much lower than those of workers in other sectors, at between 3 and 6 per cent.

Yesterday, NHS staff arrived at Dover and began rolling out lateral flow tests which detect the new particularly contagious strain of Covid-19 and provides results in around 30 minutes, rather than the 24 hours required after a PCR test.

In order for anyone to travel through France, they must first produce a negative test.

A testing site had been set up at Manston Airfield, 18 miles from Dover, but the thousands of drivers who had parked up in the town after causing two mile tailbacks and traffic gridlock last night were unable to reach it.

NHS staff were instead bussed to Dover where the initial plan was to have them testing drivers while going from lorry to lorry but after police officers were attacked by frustrated drivers desperate to go home, 30 vehicles at a time were instead processed into the port to be tested. 

The truckers’ struggles come as it emerged officials performed as few as 200 tests an hour in Kent, sparking fears the gridlock that has dominated the county all week, and seen 10,000 truckers stranded, could last for days.

Fights broke out between lorry drivers and police at Dover and Manston Airport as tensions boiled over while testing staff set up swabbing centres in a bid to get them across the Channel for Christmas.

But contractors have struggled to deliver the huge scale of testing ministers had hoped to see yesterday, with the military now in place to try and speed up efforts, which sources have described as a ‘relentless operation’.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron had earlier agreed a deal to let lorry drivers into France with a negative 30-minute lateral flow coronavirus test, after two days of chaotic gridlock following the French president’s fears over the new super-infectious strain of Covid-19 sweeping across Britain and other countries. 

The Road Haulage Association said the chaos will probably last until Boxing Day with between 100 and 300 tests being carried out per hour at Manston and a total of more than 6,000 lorries to get through. Alongside Manston, tests have taken place at the Port of Dover itself. 

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, today warned the backlog could cause issues in the supply of fresh goods to Britain. He told the Telegraph: ‘Until the backlog is cleared and supply chains return to normal, we anticipate issues with the availability of some fresh goods.’ 

A major flashpoint in Kent was at the entrance to the port, where drivers blocked the entrance in anger at not being allowed to cross the Channel without a negative coronavirus test from the UK Government. 

To get that test – which is self-administered – they had to travel 18 miles to Manston, which is already full with 3,800 lorry drivers who also clashed with police today and broke out of the site in running battles with officers. Two men were led into a police van in handcuffs by officers earlier following a scuffle. 

However, a further test site was yesterday being set up at the entrance to the Port of Dover, although the junction was blocked by vans and cars with some even parked in the wrong direction. Other centres were also being put in place at at Dreamland amusement park in Margate and on the M20 heading towards Folkestone.

The first testers arrived at Dover shortly before 3.30pm yesterday, as four police cars escorted nine vehicles driven by medics into a car park. Officers were seen speaking to three women wearing blue disposable face masks and hi-vis jackets with the NHS Test and Trace logo before they walked towards the port’s passenger reception.

Dozens of truckers trying to reach their homes on the Continent tried to force their way past officers guarding the Port of Dover this morning. Hundreds left their cabs and walked along the A20 to the port entrance jeering and whistling, with some shouting in English: ‘Open the border’, ‘We just want to go home’ and ‘F*** you, Boris!’

At one point several of them surged forwards towards a line of Kent Police officers who were forced to push them back as days of simmering anger at the chaotic situation amid the pandemic bubbled to the surface. Some drivers showed police apparently negative results, but an officer said a lot of them were ‘fake test sheets’.

Tensions also boiled over at Manston Airport, where truckers whose lorries are being held staged a protest, broke down fences and blocked roads. Some 150 members of the Armed Forces and NHS staff are working to administer Covid-19 tests at the airport, which are handed to drivers in their cabs to be self-administered under supervision. 

The result will then be communicated to the driver via text or email, identifying them via their numberplate. It wasn’t until after 5pm that Kent Council leader Roger Gough said the first 20 trucks have entered the Eurotunnel to make the crossing. 

Meanwhile, a blue van, a white van and a silver Ford Mondeo were the first three vehicles to seemingly get the all clear and be allowed to drive through the port at just before 6.30pm. These were then replaced by a further 12 vehicles shortly afterwards.

Cllr Gough said tensions between police and drivers had calmed down but added the situation remained ‘quite fragile’.

He said 100 lorries have left the Manston site for Dover but had been unable to get to the port as it was being blocked by other vehicles.

‘On the M20 side of things, the first 20 HGVs have gone into Eurotunnel,’ Mr Gough told Sky News, adding that the number should begin to ‘pick up’ rapidly.

Clashes broke out again between drivers and police at Dover earlier in the day yesterday as officers moved vehicles away from outside the entrance to make room for the testing centre. One driver laid down on the ground to stop a freight lorry which had earlier come off a ferry from Calais from leaving Dover with about 50 drivers involved in a flare-up. 

Any new lorries arriving at Manston, a disused former military airfield, were being directed to Operation Brock on the M20, where 610 vehicles were waiting. A further 632 were placed in Operation Stack on the same motorway. 

It comes as Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick last night warned it may take a ‘few days’ to clear the backlog of lorries waiting to cross the Channel. He had initially said he hoped HGVs would begin crossing this morning.

Lorry drivers at the entrance yesterday were honking their horns and shouting in protest at being stuck. Standing in small groups, they shouted ‘we want to go home’ as they tried to shelter from heavy rain and strong winds. 

A deal was finally struck with France after a ban on UK arrivals was imposed by President Macron on Sunday, which has since seen thousands of trucks stranded in Kent, unable to cross the Channel.  

The agreement requires every driver to have been tested for coronavirus, using controversial lateral flow tests, which are able to turn around results in under an hour but have had their effectiveness questioned.

However experts warned the UK still faces an uphill battle to test 6,000 drivers a day for coronavirus – with the International Road Transport Union warning even a 30-minute test would be ‘absolutely a disaster’.