In a press release dated just days ago, the Lithuanian Employment Office confirmed that 23,260 3rd-country nationals were issued documents last year allowing them to work in the country.
The number could have easily been higher had Lithuania’s haulage sector not been held back by its express visa quota, which it had exhausted in November.
On top of the above, the Employment Office confirmed that citizens of Sierra Leone, Congo, Senegal, Vanuatu, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Sudan, and Jordan had been issued one or two work permits each (please note that these permits have not been taken into account in our chart above due to their very small number).
Incredibly, the Employment Office data showed 78% of all work permits issued last year were for international lorry drivers. The next-highest profession was for chefs, who made up 4% of the total.
Moreover, all of the companies listed as having received most permits were also from the haulage sector.
According to the Employment Office, the aforementioned companies are the following:
- Transorloja
- Girmeta (whose manager is listed as Girteka’s Head of Transport Operations Department Lithuania)
- KLP transport (whose listed company address is the same as a Girteka base)
- Hoptrans
- Termolita
- Trasis (whose listed company address is the same as a Girteka base)
- Girtrans (whose listed company address is the same as a Girteka base)
- Transmėja
- Hegelmann
- ME transportas
The release of the figures comes after repeated calls from Lithuania’s haulage association for a greater allocation of express visas for lorry drivers.
Just days ago, the country’s largest logistics provider, Girteka, also revealed that it was sparing no effort in recruiting truckers from non-EU countries.
Photo: Vilensija, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image cropped)
