The Hindu Business Line : Fewer hands at the wheel

Nearly a quarter of India’s 65 lakh trucks are lying idle throughout the country. The reason: an acute shortage of drivers, not dearth of cargo. The shortage is not only affecting the trucking industry, but also slowing down the movement of goods across regions.

The demand for drivers is estimated at around 1.5 lakh annually. However, that many drivers are just not available. Most youngsters are not interested in the job, which is considered fairly low down in the social strata. Also, new opportunities are being created in other sectors. Recently, there were reports of a migration of drivers to countries such as the US, which also faces a shortage of drivers.

Says Mr K.M. Narasimhan of the Chennai-based Simhaas Transport, there are around 65 lakh trucks and 1.5 crore drivers in the country. The number of trucks keeps increasing every year, but there is no scope for finding new drivers. “We are willing to pay higher salaries. But, there are no takers,” he said.

An interesting aspect of the driver shortage in the truck belt of Namakkal in Tamil Nadu is that girls do not want to marry truck drivers. Says Mr R. Mohan, a truck-owner based in Namakkal, the issue of driver shortage has been bothering the sector for four or five years, and its effect is being felt now.

Reluctant to marry truck drivers

The reluctance to marry a truck driver, for various reasons, has been a major reason for driver shortage, forcing youngsters to look for jobs in other sectors, he said.

Traditionally, cleaners learn driving informally and become drivers. A truck used to have two drivers and a cleaner. Five years ago, the trend changed, with only one driver and a cleaner in a vehicle. However, in the last year or two, the situation became worse with only the driver in the vehicle.

The drivers get paid around Rs 15,000 a month. However, youngsters are willing to work in other sectors for a lesser salary. There is no immediate solution to the issue, and the problem will only aggravate in future, he said. The huge logistics spends of around Rs 90 trillion globally and Rs 4 trillion in India indicate the importance of this sector. It justifies a deeper look at its unique characteristics a very important one being its manpower intensity.

The rapid evolution of the logistics industry in India, both in terms of scale and scope of services, is creating the need for a whole new set of skills along with an ever-increasing requirement of skilled and trained manpower.

While the cross-section of industry players recognises the critical need for manpower development in this sector, precious little has been done to investigate the core issues and identify initiatives to address this situation, says a white-paper on “Skills Gaps in the Indian Logistics Sector” released last year by KPMG in association with the CII.

Truck drivers constitute the profile with the most critical skill gaps in the road freight segment. The profession attracts largely illiterate people, with no formal training for the job. The report estimates that while there are around 3 million truck drivers for medium and heavy commercial vehicles in the country currently, this number is likely to swell to nearly 51 million by 2015. Even if 50 per cent of all drivers in India were to be trained, almost 125 institutes of the size and scale of the existing one in Namakkal would be required to be set up in the next 7-8 years.

Focus on training and development

In a recent seminar organised by the Chennai Goods Transport Association, Mr B. Santhanam, Managing Director of Saint Gobain Glass India, said there are around 65,00,000 commercial vehicles on road in India and around 600,000 vehicles are being added every year. This includes light commercial vehicles, medium and heavy commercial vehicles. One out of six vehicles is not always running because of a variety of reasons, such as accidents and non-availability of skilled workforce.

In other words, 2-3 people, including drivers and helpers, are required per truck. This means there is a direct workforce requirement of around 2 crore people. If the monthly salary is between Rs 8,000 and Rs 15,000 for a driver, the wage bill is to tune of about Rs 200,000 crore annually.

“If we spend one per cent of the total wage bill on training and development, we will be spending around Rs 2,000 crore. The truck industry needs to realise that if we don’t invest in our people, we are not going to go much further,” he said.

Mr Narasimhan feels the government, transport operators and other stake-holders should jointly address the issue. The immediate requirement is for setting up two driver training institutes in each State and, in the long run, in each district.

Also, the trucking sector should spend more time on training drivers and consider them as part of the organisation. Also, a lot more professionalism needs to be brought in among drivers to make the profession more attractive for youngsters, he said.

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