To the Editor,
This week sees an "International Break" for football leagues around the world. Footballers playing in leagues all over the world will traverse the globe in order to link up with their international team mates to play "friendlies" and World Cup qualifiers against other international teams.
Can someone please explain how it is possible to be able to travel freely from country to country to kick a spherical bit of leather around for the amusement or otherwise of non-existent spectators when at the same time it is apparently impossible for up to 400,000 seafarers to be repatriated to their homes and families, having long since finished contracts of employment and with no end to their forced labour in sight?
Insurmountable barriers
This is apparently due to the insurmountable barriers caused by the pandemic, such as a lack of flights, closed borders, quarantine issues — none of which seem to have any effect on footballers.
You may have occasionally found yourself delayed at work — something crops up at the last minute and you just have to stay, which means you miss your bus, or train, or get snarled up in those traffic jams you always try to avoid. Which in turn means you’re late for dinner, or late to do dinner for the kids, or to pick them up, or to meet a date, or for the film you’d booked tickets to go and see.
How much worse would it be if you simply couldn’t get out of your workplace, if all the doors were locked, the windows barred, and you were told you would have to stay indefinitely? Oh, and your employer could only afford to pay you part of your salary or none of it at all.
If you complained you would be doing so in the full knowledge that you were risking your future employment prospects. Imagine the effect on your family, your mental well-being, their mental well-being. Surely there would be long-term implications as well as short-term inconveniences.
Still, at least your family could tune into the football. And that’s the important thing.
