Ro-ro tanker hazard
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AN industrial chernist was flown by RAF helicopter to a storm-battered ferry in the North Sea this week to advise on how to deal with a dangerous chemical load—butil acetate—that had spilt from an overturned tanker aboard the ship.
The Tor Lines ferry Domino was heaving in a force 11 gale when the foreign-owned road tanker en route to the Conoco refinery at Killingholme near Immingham overturned on the ferry's deck.
Domino was forced to heave-to 30 miles out from Spurn Head and change direction so that poisonous fumes from the spillage did not affect the 30 crew and passengers. tasks group indicated a third of the drivers were trained through the RTITB, Mr Kevan suggested that one explanation would be the large number of own-account drivers who are successfully trained on-the-job but do not feature in the statistics.
"This may be a reflection of the less generous treatment recorded by many training boards to formalise driver training or a reflection that on-the-job training is perfectly adequate," said Mr Kevan.
The RHA had claimed that 134,000 drivers were employed by hauliers paying the training levy in 1973 as against 319,000 employed by own-account operators. Hauliers, it said, had a 29.6 per cent turnover of class 1 hgv drivers against 18.6 per cent in the ownaccount sector.
But, said RHA, hauliers recruited 4.5 per cent of recruits against own-account operators' 2.4 per cent. The RHA's director-general Mr G. R. Newman suggested that this meant that many hgv drivers went to other industries.
Mr Newman claimed that these figures meant that the hauliers were bearing the levy which represented an "unfair financial burden on the road haulage industry."