Knowing that your family is okay during these hard times makes our heart calm like sea. In this new life of pandemic, where seafarers don't know when or how they are coming back home while thinking everyday how the lives of their families will put everything only into hope and prayers. ILO’s 2006 Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) states that the maximum continuous period that a seafarer should serve on board a vessel without leave is 11 months - the average actual duration of seafarers’ contracts varies, but is typically between three and nine months (followed by unpaid time ashore).Ĭonnecting at home is the most important thing for a seafarer now. The result is that although ships are able to offload goods, crew may have to remain aboard until the ship reaches a port that allows crew repatriation and replacement, leaving those seafarers obliged to continue working, sometimes beyond their contract durations. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, many countries, in order to prevent the coronavirus being spread among their populations, have closed or restricted some or all ports and airports to foreign nationals, including seafarers. The majority (51%) are from China, Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, India, and Ukraine. These ships are collectively manned by a global crew of approximately 1.6 million seafarers who are employed on contracts by ship owners, operators, managers, charterers and others. trainers, mobile phones, cars) – are all transported via cargo ships that travel across the globe, often stopping at many ports to on- and off-load goods. oil, lumber, soybeans), and finished goods (e.g. Estimates for May 2021 put the figure at 200,000. (Latest figures can be found via the Neptune Declaration crew change indicator.)ĩ0% of world trade is conducted by sea – raw materials (e.g. merchant crew who work on cargo ships – have been ‘stuck’ on board their vessels - unable to disembark and go home at the end of their contracts. An equivalent number are unable to board ships to work. At its peak it is estimated that up to 400,000 seafarers were unable to be repatriated. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many hundreds of thousands of seafarers – i.e.
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