Summer holidays worsen the "collapse" in driving tests in Ponent
The guild fears the loss of four more examiners, who have asked to leave the district
LleidaThe crisis caused by the long waiting list for driving license exams is worsening in the Lleida regions. The latest three-week holiday break in the examination schedules (usual during July and August) has exacerbated a situation that was already dire just two months ago. Sources from the Association of Driving Schools of Lleida state that, out of the nine examiners who should be active in the province, four have requested transfers, while the rest continue to work sporadically. “When they are assigned to our area, whether they are from outside or local, the examiners end up taking sick leave, resigning, and leaving,” laments the association’s president, Raquel Castro. “Something must be happening internally,” says the spokesperson.
At the beginning of summer, the situation was already unsustainable, with approximately five thousand students waiting to be examined (both theory and practical) and waiting times of up to five months. Now, it is estimated that these figures could be even higher. “We cannot enroll new students in our schools because of this situation,” Castro laments.
Driving school instructors in Lleida took to the streets on July 14th to say enough is enough to this situation. During that mobilization, the resignation of the Director General of Traffic (DGT), Pere Navarro, and the territorial delegate, Maria José Soler, was demanded. Ignasi Peralta, an instructor at a Lleida driving school, explained during the protest that “people can’t take it anymore,” because they prepare for an exam and if they fail, they have to wait another three or four months to retake it, “with the costs this entails.” The situation is even worse for those who aim to obtain a truck driver's license, with cases involving up to six months of waiting while “the country needs truck drivers.”
The sector has been particularly critical of the “treatment” they receive from the DGT headquarters in Lleida, calling the situation “unsustainable.” Therefore, they called for them to be allowed to be examined and for the problem to be fixed, which they currently attribute to “an inability to collaborate.”
Raquel Castro claims for a "stable and effective team of examiners", without staff on leave. In Lleida there are nine assigned, a figure they would consider sufficient if they really "did their job", she adds. Castro acknowledges that while "the problem is everywhere", in the case of the Lleida prefecture, waiting lists have been aggravated by an unstable team of examiners. The president of the association warns that five evaluators from the team have been on sick leave recently and that the incorporation of the so-called "itinerants" has not solved "the collapse". The guild believes that if all civil servants were operational simultaneously, the waiting list would be reduced to zero in a couple of months.
On August 17, the examination calendar resumed in the Lleida region and, according to the driving school collective, there is an "absolute lack of foresight" from Trànsit to address a persistent crisis. "With this administration, it's like hitting a wall," laments Castro, who assures that if the problem is not solved in the short term, they will call for new protests.
Measures such as the so-called super Saturday, a call that allowed over 300 applicants to be examined in just one day last May, are insufficient, according to the association. The implementation of the Operational Examination Reinforcement Plan was communicated in a working meeting on April 30 with the intention of responding to the sector's demands. According to the central government's Subdelegation, the DGT requested a list of students ready to take the driving test (including applicants who had already taken it in a previous call) and the list provided by the centers totaled 315 students who participated in the test that Saturday. In this regard, the Spanish government's sub-delegate in Lleida, José Crespín, said that "if the driving schools had provided a list of 1,000 students, a sufficient operation would have been organized to absorb this demand".
Crespín, however, recalls that the DGT has also made an effort this year to increase theoretical examinations by 10% and assures that in the delegations of La Pobla de Segur and La Seu d’Urgell, both practical and theoretical tests have also been increased.
Beyond the waiting list for practical driving exams, the sector also demands "decent" examination areas. In this regard, Castro explained that students are often called to areas such as industrial estates or vacant lots, without nearby services and in the open air, taking into account the fog and cold of winter and the high temperatures of summer.
Crespín says that reducing the waiting list "is a process that requires shared responsibility from all parties," and that "it is not just about the DGT's capacity to conduct exams or the availability of examiners. There is also a responsibility on the part of driving schools to have the capacity to conduct the practicals and a planning of instructors and vehicles," he concluded. The data provided by the DGT indicate that the Lleida region has 49 driving schools and 224 instructors.