To deal with the shortage of SNCF drivers, the Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, promised on Monday to “accelerate training and recruitment”. “I’m not going to tell you that from tomorrow, all the trains will be operating in an ideal way. On the other hand (…) we are going to speed up the training and recruitment of drivers”, declared the minister on the sidelines of a trip to Dunkirk.
The lack of drivers has forced the SNCF to remove TER in several regions, including Hauts-de-France, where 136 trains have been removed daily since October 24, according to the president of the regional council Xavier Bertrand. “There is about a 10% reduction in supply” in the region, agreed Clément Beaune. “Behind a somewhat global and cold figure, it is sometimes hours of waiting”, he added, denouncing a situation “neither acceptable nor bearable”.
Beaune asks “the SNCF for a plan to resolve these difficulties as quickly as possible”, because “we cannot live in the galley for more months”, he underlined, affirming that he would talk ” in the next few hours” with the president of the public company, Jean-Pierre Farandou.
Twelve months of training
For Clément Beaune, who met Xavier Bertrand in the afternoon, “there must be an extremely strong mobilization effort by the SNCF”, even if “there is no magic wand to reduce the shortages of drivers in a day”. “I call on all the teams mobilized to find the maximum number of drivers available”, he added secondly in Lille after his meeting with the president of the Hauts-de-France regional council, suggesting that it was necessary to “draw the consequences” of these tensions and “perhaps pay more” to recruit.
“It’s still incredible that a company the size of the SNCF can discover in terms of human resources that all of a sudden, overnight, it lacks 65 drivers”, launched his side the vice -president of the regional council in charge of Transport, Franck Dhersin, present this Monday in Dunkirk.
Regarding the acceleration of recruitment promised by Beaune, he stressed that it took “two months to choose the candidates and then twelve months to train them”. “We know very well that it will take months to return to a normal situation,” he said.