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Erdi, who came to Lithuania to study economics from Istanbul, has worked as a shuttle for two years. And although she doesn’t know many Lithuanian languages, she has never had problems at work.
“Where to go, what other direction. I’d say there are 10 sentences you have to pay to successfully communicate with older and younger clients, deliver them where you need them,” says Erdi, a host and student from Turkey.
The boy says, like many other foreign students he knows, this job is necessary to survive in Lithuania.
“I am still studying, so I have many friends who are studying and working on this job. It is very good, with the money that we can earn. The salaries are really enough, ”says Erdi.
However, non-Lithuanian carriers found themselves in the crosshairs of language guards. The Lithuanian Language Inspectorate says that at the end of 2019 it submitted a request to the government and asked for the legal acts to be changed so that carriers and other people who provide services to the population must speak Lithuanian.
“If you provide a service, you still have to serve your customer in the language of the state. If the customer needs it,” says Audrius Valotka, head of the Language Inspectorate.
According to Valotka, the current regime is discriminatory. The requirement to speak Lithuanian applies to many service delivery specialties. Here taxi drivers are required to speak the language of the state and drivers do not. They still enjoy a loophole.
“Only the law on the language was drafted enough before the arrival of transporters working on the basis of individual activity,” said Edvinas Naraškevičius, president of the Lithuanian transport union.
The president of the transporters union says that the transporters themselves have approached the language inspection. It is said that in the capital, people began to complain that drivers from Ukraine and other countries do not speak Lithuanian or English, only Russian, which affects the attractiveness of Lithuanian-speaking carriers.
“You cannot call, you cannot agree, stop, a lot of problems, absences, absences, you cannot call the children, etc. There are many such simple stories,” says E. Naraškevičius.
Stories of getting lost, not knowing where to drive, or even interrupting drivers from abroad lasted until the quarantine, when many had to leave.
“Almost every second, every third, before the quarantine, I was a carrier, a Ukrainian, well, not a Ukrainian from countries that don’t speak English at all, much less Lithuanian,” says E. Naraškevičius.
The director of Bolt, probably the largest service company in Lithuania, is surprised by such statements. Foreigners make up just under one percent of all carriers in the company, and complaints about lack of communication are extremely rare. The company’s 60 hearing-impaired employees have no miscommunication problems.
“It just came to our attention then. I do not drive myself and I travel with our services, I usually do not say a word when I drive, because you enter the direction of travel in the application, where to pick you up, where to take you, I pay through the application. “Says Andrius Pacevičius, Bolt’s boss in Lithuania.
The language inspection says that the requirements for carriers in the drawers of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports fell in the fall after the country’s new government took office, but it has no intention of landing and promises to increase pressure to adopt a new order.
“There is a transition period of six months. In half a year, a sane person can live in a Lithuanian environment and want to learn the Lithuanian language minimally in order to communicate with the client,” said A. Valotka.
“I think a lot of foreigners would quit this job. They are trying to earn money, they don’t have time. The Lithuanian language is very difficult,” says Erdi.
“Nobody promised them that everything would be easy here. If you want it to be easy, let him live in Turkey,” says A. Valotka.
According to the proposed amendments, the responsibility for transporters to speak Lithuanian would lie with the transport organizers. A person who does not speak the Lithuanian language would be penalized for violating the rules.
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