The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has kicked off a social media campaign to remind the shipping industry that the Covid-19 crew crisis is far from over.
The shipowners’ association is highlighting the “hypocrisy” of elite athletes being allowed to travel to the Beijing Winter Olympics and Australian Open Tennis tournament while seafarers struggle to get home.
Under the Twitter hashtag #DoesTableTennisCount the ICS contends that playing table tennis onboard ships should also entitle seafarers to the same travel privileges as sports men and women.
The ICS’s director of employment affairs Natalie Shaw — who was recently awarded an MBE in the UK for her efforts on behalf of seafarers during the pandemic — said that governments are valuing “cavorting on a snowboard” above the critical role seafarers have played in keeping the global supply chain moving.
She said government attitudes to athletes “makes a mockery of the vital role seafarers have played over the last two years”.
She pointed out that although Australia recently deported unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic after legal deliberations, if it had been a seafarer, “they would not have been allowed in, and it would never have got to that stage”.
Shaw said there is a danger of the current problems of seafarers being accepted as normal. “The sort of feedback I am getting is that because this has been going on for such a long time companies are accepting it,” she said.
Countries are still not living up to their commitment to recognise seafarers as key workers, she pointed out. Many Asian countries including Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Indonesia continue to make travel difficult for seafarers.
In the Philippines, seafarers are experiencing trouble getting to Manilla to board flights to join ships.
The ICS has had to make several high-level interventions to help seafarers get home after being trapped at airports, while difficulties in getting medical care to seafarers remain.
Shaw said it is too early to relax on industry efforts to win back the freedom to travel for seafarers.
“Last year I was really hopeful that we had started to see an upturn, but that appears to be gone now, and we have to keep up with the momentum,” she said.
