Τώρα αρχίζω να πιστεύω ότι τα μη επανδρωμένα πλοία θα κάνουν την εμφάνιση τους νωρίτερα....
Πολλοί κλαίνε... τι θα γίνουμε θα σταματήσει το εμπόριο. Το μόνο φυσικό φάρμακο είναι η απεξάρτηση. Έχουμε γεμίσει ανατολίτικα , και ακόμη κάνουμε και τους μάγκες στους Κινέζους...
June 17,
2020 by Bloomberg
The International Transport Workers’ Federation said
it will now support ship crews’ rights to stop working, even if that comes at
the cost of disrupting global trade.
The change in messaging comes after it says
governments took insufficient action to facilitate the repatriation of around
200,000 seafarers and exempt them from Covid-19 travel restrictions by
designating them “key workers.” The federation and its affiliated unions also
called on crews not to agree to contract extensions starting Tuesday.
“Enough is enough,” ITF President Paddy Crumlin said
in a statement Monday. “We have to draw a line in the sand and today is the day
that we make it crystal clear to governments, that from June 16, seafarers are
going to start enforcing their right to stop working and to return home. No
more contract extensions.”
Normally, about 100,000 seafarers change vessels every
month during scheduled port stops, when vessels discharge and pick up cargo,
and the longest the longest seafarers should be on board a ship is 11 months,
according to the Maritime Labor Convention.
That pattern has been disrupted by the pandemic, and
the union initially acknowledged that the shipping industry was faced with an
unprecedented challenge. In March it supported crews who chose to sign contract
extensions while out at sea.
The federation warned that its new approach could be
highly disruptive to global trade, and that any resulting “chaos in supply
chains” is the fault of government leaders, the union’s General Secretary
Stephen Cotton said in a press release.
“If seafarers start getting off ships wherever they
can, then ships will fall below safe manning numbers and insurance coverage is
going to lapse or be pulled from the world’s cargo vessels,” Cotton said in a
subsequent email. “There’s a real risk that much of the world’s cargo shipping
fleet could lose its insurance cover.”
Shipping giants echoed the union’s calls for
governments to facilitate crew changes.
A spokeswoman for Hapag-Lloyd AG, the world’s
fifth-largest container shipper, said the biggest challenge when trying to swap
crews are the rules in the countries and at the specific harbors where the
ships dock. A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, which controls about one-fifth of the
global fleet used to transport goods by sea, said 35% of the 6,600 seafarers it
currently has at sea have been stranded for longer than their contractual
agreement.
“Our seafarers have been sailing non-stop, enabling
societies to withstand the present turmoil, by securing much needed deliveries
of food, medicine and other essential products,” Palle Laursen, Maersk’s chief
technical officer, said in an emailed statement. “We need authorities to engage
with us in a constructive dialogue to facilitate crew changes under the current
critical circumstances, ensuring minimal risk to crews and their families as
well as the continued flow of supplies around the world.”
Some shippers are taking matters into their own hands
and diverting to ports solely to relieve exhausted crews, a practice usually
reserved for medial emergencies. Genco Liberty, a capesize vessel owned by
New-York based Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd., deviated to Singapore for
about 48 hours while en-route from from Brazil to China. Flights were chartered
for the incoming crew, from Sri Lanka, and the outgoing crew to India.
As the crisis gained global attention, some key ports
have eased restrictions. Last month, Singapore has relaxed the rules for crew
changes, and recently started using chartered flights to enact rotations. Hong
Kong will also no longer require compulsory quarantine for cargo ship crew.
Governments and port authorities should adhere to
their obligations under the Maritime Labor Convention, and in fact, only a few
small practical changes are required to help seafarers, said Cotton. “That is their legal
obligation.”
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