Romania has an acute shortage of professional drivers. We need no less than 150 thousand drivers of trucks, trucks, buses or taxis. That's after our drivers left in droves for Western Europe, lured by higher wages. To save their businesses, Romanian bosses have ended up going thousands of kilometers away to Asia to find new employees.
"I want to work in Romania because I hear the pay is very good and I know Romanians are very nice"says a Filipino driver.
The need for professional drivers in Romania is so great that our employers are looking for them thousands of kilometers away.
"We have a target of 3,000 drivers, of which we have already selected more than a thousand. They will have a salary of between €850-1000 for driving in the country, and those who will be leaving for the European Union will have somewhere between €2300-2500"says Yosef Peisakh, manager of a company recruiting foreign workers.
In the country, Asians who are already working as drivers say they have adapted easily to our country's traffic. Asanka is from Sri Lanka and has been driving for a company in Bucharest for three years. He prides himself on not having had an accident.
"In my country, we drove on the left, but in Romania we drive on the right. That's the main difference"says Asanka, a Sri Lankan driver.
To make it easier to hire foreigners, the state has changed the law. The exam to obtain a taxi driver, ride-sharing, cargo or passenger transportation license can also be taken in English. Until now, the test was only in Romanian.
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"Today in Romania we have a shortage of drivers in all our categories, freight and passenger transport, of over 150,000 drivers", says Vasile Steffănescu, president of COTAR.
That's because our drivers have gone to France, Germany, Italy or the Netherlands for much better wages. And they are appreciated by foreign employers for their reliability.
In our country last year, Asian moped riders and delivery cyclists were involved in nearly 90 road accidents. Over 80 people were injured, mostly from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. They often failed to give right of way and failed to look out when changing direction.
