Only 1,600 to go..! Kent lorry chaos begins to ease with less than 2,000 drivers waiting to cross The Channel - after British and Polish army and French firefighters find just 36 Covid cases in testing drive
Around 1,600 truckers remain stuck in the lines of lorries which line the M20 in Kent despite mass testing
Another 800 military personnel were sent to Kent as part of Operation Rose to help test the truckers
Thousands of drivers spent Christmas Day in their lorry cabs as they waited to cross Channel to France
Villagers from Mersham, near Ashford, lowered food from bridges to feed the stranded truckers
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Salvation Army volunteers fed some of the 1,500 truck drivers stranded in Kent after France closed its border with Britain
Salvation Army volunteers fed some of the 1,500 truck drivers stranded in Kent after France closed its border with Britain
Adam PayneDec 23, 2020, 15:24 IST
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Volunteers from the Salvation Army stepped in to feed truck drivers stranded in Kent in Monday night.
The charity organisation intervened amid warnings that there were insufficient food supplies.
An industry email to Boris Johnson s government seen by Business Insider criticised the critical failure to provide welfare to the HGV drivers stuck in England after France closed the freight border.
Thousands of foreign drivers 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.
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Kent villagers are helping feed stranded truck drivers lined up along the motorway by lowering bags of food to them from bridges.
They are using rope and shopping bags to deliver goods including beans, fruit and sweets to stranded lorry drivers waiting for Covid tests.
Hundreds of hauliers are lined on the M20 as part of Operation Stack waiting for a negative test result before they can make their way to the continent.
It comes after French president Emmanuel Macron ordered the border with the UK to shut on Saturday following the detection of a new virulent strain of coronavirus in Britain.