EA haulier who employed Polish and Ukrainian drivers has been
Page 6
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
disqualified from holding an 0licence for a year after they committed a series of hours and tachograph offences.
At a Cambridge disciplinary inquiry, Eastern Area Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms was told of a catalogue of offences by drivers employed by West Thurrock-based Sergei Shostak.
Offences included incomplete centre field details; the use of charts for up to three days at a time; and failure to take sufficient daily rest combined with excessive hours and winding back tachograph clocks to create false records.
Traffic examiner Jerry Gleason told the inquiry that the drivers did not have EU driving licences so lt was unlawful for them to be driving British-registered vehicles. He added that most of the hours offences had happened outside the UK.
Shostak said operations had been suspended in September after his insurers warned him that nonEC drivers were not covered by the policy. He told Simms that he would only use EU-licensed drivers if the licence continued.
Simms said that Shostak was aware of the problems associated with operating CVs in Poland and the Ukraine. "He [Shostak] relies upon the lax approach of those companies to drivers' hours and tachograph rules to excuse the flagrant breaches where no justification for the breaches is argued," Simms added. "He must have known his drivers were breaking the rules."
The TO rejected arguments that he had nojurisdction to consider breaches of the EU drivers' hours and tachograph rules committed outside the EU.