THE owner of a Pembrokeshire haulage company has stopped sending his drivers to France due to growing concerns over their safety.

The migrant crisis at the French port of Calais has been well documented in recent days, with 2,000 migrants attempting to storm the Channel tunnel on Monday evening (July 27) and a further 1,500 on Tuesday.

Authorities estimate there are 5,000 migrants camped in Calais, having travelled from war-torn countries like Somalia, Sudan and Syria.

Desperate to enter the UK, the migrants are stowing themselves away in trucks and jumping onto the trains.

Letterston lorry driver Peter Harding said the problem had been brewing for the past nine years, but had become more intense in recent weeks.

Mr Harding has worked in the industry for the best part of 40 years, and runs Peter Harding Freight International out of his farm on Mathry Road.

He has a fleet of 13 trucks, 90% of which travel back and forth from France transporting time sensitive goods such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Mr Harding said: “A couple of weeks ago immigrants broke into a padlocked container, which meant the supermarket rejected the goods and me having to make a big insurance claim.

“There is also the issue of intimidation, especially during the night when we do a lot of our work. My young son had people climbing onto the top of his cab and people hiding underneath his lorry.

“We’ve already got strict rules and regulations to abide by and we shouldn’t have to put up with this as well.”

Mr Harding has now taken the difficult decision to temporarily stop transporting goods internationally and concentrate more on UK work.

He said the cost of insurance claims and the risk to his drivers meant he had no choice. He has now called for all hauliers to join him until a solution to the migrant crisis is found.

Mr Harding added that the situation was doing little to encourage more young people to enter the industry.

“There is already a tremendous shortage of HGV drivers in the UK and scenes like this are not encouraging,” he said.