COVID-19: Fury Among Truck Drivers in Dover as Coronavirus Testing Fails to Ease Tensions | UK News



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Around Dover Harbor, all you can hear is the almost constant blast of vehicle horns.

But they are not shouting to celebrate the reopening of the port, this is pure anger.

And the days of suppressed frustration, stranded in dire conditions, finally turned into furious clashes with the police shortly after dawn.

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More confrontations between angry drivers and police

Short fights that continued sporadically throughout the day and into the night.

Overnight, dozens of trucks, vans and cars had blocked the main entrance to the ferry terminal.

Behind them were many hundreds of other vehicles, lined up on almost every street around the Dover boardwalk.

The drivers here are determined not to lose their place at the front of the queue.

The 26-mile journey to COVID-19 The test stations at Manston Airfield would see them relegated to the bottom of a very long queue of more than 6,000 trucks.

Those I spoke to have already endured more than three days here. Potentially adding several more days to that wait is something they just aren’t willing to contemplate.

Police cars patrol as freight trucks and freight vehicles queue up a closed section of the M20 motorway leading to the Port of Dover, near Ashford in Kent, south-eastern England, on December 22, 2020, after that a number of countries ban travel, including accompanied transport.  arriving from the UK, due to the rapid spread of a new, more infectious strain of coronavirus.  - Britain's critical south coast port of Dover said on December 20 that it was closing for all accompanied passengers and cargo due to French border restrictions.
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There has been a huge congestion on the M20

I spoke to Lukas, a Polish driver stranded here since Sunday night, and deeply suspicious of official claims that fast coronavirus the tests are already underway.

“Where is the British Army to do the tests?” He asks. I told him that test stations had been installed at Manston.

But he simply did not believe me: “Yes, we spoke on the radio with other drivers who are at the airport. They have said that there is no evidence there, that they are leaving.”

He’s partly right: testing is off to a slow start. After many hours, two test stations were in operation at the aerodrome, but they have only processed a relatively small number of truck drivers.

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‘We have a problem with France’ – angry carriers

Some drivers we saw got tired of waiting and decided to leave.

And there is the additional problem of dealing with those who have been tested.

They can’t come to the Dover ferry port because the other drivers are blocking the terminal.

Some leave via Eurotunnel, but until the port blockade is resolved they will not be able to get here.

That prompted the officials’ decision to establish a test station at the terminal entrance.

Drivers use a pickup truck to protect themselves from the rain in Dover
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Drivers use a pickup truck to protect themselves from the rain in Dover

By mid-afternoon, dozens of test personnel arrived here and by early afternoon they had started their work.

So the ones at the front of this queue are finally being tested, with the aim of getting on the ferries in the next few hours.

But that has done little to ease tensions here. People are still very suspicious of the authorities.

A man was knocked to the ground and arrested after striking a police officer.

And with government officials admitting that it will take several more days to deal with the backlog of stranded vehicles, it’s unlikely we’ve seen the last of the anger outside of this port.

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