The lack of truck or bus drivers, the increase in retirements and the high average age of the dedicated professionals, who are over 50 years old, has led the transport employer Asetrans, the Girona transport association, to adopt several measures to alleviate the shortage of workers that the sector has suffered for years.
In 2021, the La Selva Intermodal Merchandise Center (CIM) was created, located very close to the Girona airport, to provide service to road freight transport companies. It is estimated that in Spain there is a lack of about 15,000 professionals in this field.
A year ago, in collaboration with other associations in the sector, an agreement was formalized with the Departments of Territory, Education, Business and Labor to improve the training and professional qualification of their workers. One of the demands of the Girona employers' association was to have a medium-level public training cycle to train future professionals.
That agreement translated, among other things, into the improvement of the training offer, professional qualification and job placement. As a result of that agreement, it was agreed to install a road vehicle driving simulator in five public centers that offer the intermediate level training cycle for driving road transport vehicles.
The Instituto de Montilivi in Girona is the only one in the demarcation that teaches these courses and joins the Pere Martell, in Tarragona; that of Our Lady of Mercy, in Barcelona; at La Capparrella, in Lleida and at the Instituto de Vic, which has been offering these studies since 2017.
The president of Asetrans in Girona, Eduard Ayach, has claimed this morning, in a visit to the simulator of the institute of Montilivi, public training to solve the lack of professionals in the driving of road transport vehicles.
Public education is one more alternative to private training that should help cover the lack of bus and truck drivers, which in Catalonia alone implies more than 110,000 jobs.
In the Girona course, which started a year ago with the first course and this one already has two, 16 students are enrolled and it is a dual modality, which means that training alternates at the educational center and in the company. Between 900 and 1,000 hours of the 2,320 that make up the two courses will be internships in companies in the sector.
The simulator allows you to train various driving maneuvers such as parking, loading and unloading, turns in tractors, rigid or articulated trucks with or without trailer, tanker trucks, forestry trucks, buses...
The tool is available to middle school students but also to members of transport associations who want to retrain. Ayach recalled that in the past the licenses to drive this type of vehicle "came from military service and not from proper training."
Ayach recognizes that "there are not enough" drivers and hopes that the cycle taught in Girona will be maintained over time and grow in the number of students. The director of the Institut de Montilivi, Ruben Pino, hopes to be able to reach 30 students between the two courses "as soon as possible."
For her part, the delegate of the Generalitat in Girona, Laia Cañigueral, points out that with this course "a demand that the sector has been demanding for many years has become a reality" and considers that "it is imperative" to have studies of this type .
