Filipinos in Roald Amundsen believe Hurtigruten endangered them ahead of ship’s corona eruption – NRK

– 71 people in total were infected after the outbreak, I say.

– 71? asks «Chris».

He is one of 123 Filipino workers who were aboard Roald Amundsen during the corona eruption in late July.

– 71. That’s total, I answer.

– Does it include passengers?

– Yes, 29 passengers and 42 crew members.

– Hello …

“Chris” is silent. He and three of his Filipino colleagues meet NRK in the lobby of a hotel in Kristiansand, in the city where the ship is docking today.

They want to count the fateful days in Roald Amundsen. But above all, they have questions. To me.

Questions they say they can’t ask Hurtigruten, their own employer.

And they say that if someone finds out that you have spoken to the press, they will not get a job. Not on the Hurtigruten or any other ship. That’s for sure, they say.

That’s why NRK gives them anonymous names: “Chris”, “Sonny”, “Mike” and “Susi”.

The desire for anonymity is repeated both before and during the interview.

Also four days later, and in large print, this message appears on Mike’s Messenger:

The fear of being exposed is great.

But they are determined to tell their story anyway.

Mistrust in management

Only on the night of July 31 did they learn of the infection on board, says Chris. Hurtigruten also confirms this to NRK.

A total of six people have been diagnosed with the infection. Four employees. The first two, invited, were diagnosed on July 29.

Hurtigruten director Daniel Skjeldam had previously told NRK that they followed international standards when putting Filipino workers directly to work after the long journey from the Philippines to Qatar.

The Philippines reacts strongly to this and notes that the World Health Organization guidelines were not followed.

– The crew should have been quarantined eight to 14 days before we started work on the ship, says Mike.

– The next day we started working. They put our lives in danger, says Sonny.

Hurtigruten acknowledges that several mistakes were made in the run-up to and in handling the outbreak.

– Exactly what happened, we will find answers and make sure it cannot happen again through the external investigation we have initiated, says Asta Lassesen, acting director of operations at Hurtigruten.

Hurtigruten apologizes

And the correspondence between the municipality of Tromsø and Hurtigruten confirms the fear that employees describe.

NRK has gained access to various emails and text messages. Here it appears:

• Employees have been worried / scared, and have experienced receiving too little and too late information from Hurtigruten.
• The municipality suspects that there has been a large spread of the infection while the ship was at the Tromsø dock.
• 16 have shared a cabin with someone who tested positive.
• Quarantine rules have been broken.
• Several with obvious symptoms, where the ship’s doctor has stated that they had no symptoms of covid-19.
• Several are said to have been sitting in isolation on deck two. According to one of the crew, the conditions are bad, without windows.
• At least one of those infected had diabetes.

The crew also expresses mistrust in the management and medical personnel on board.

It is also expressed in an SMS exchange between the expedition leader in Hurtigruten, Line Overgaard, and the municipal chief in Tromsø, Kathrine Kristoffersen:

Kristoffersen also confirms to NRK that the crew were concerned about the ship.

Lassesen at Hurtigruten apologizes.

– The first days were for obvious reasons very demanding for everyone on board and many felt the confusion and fear. “It hurts to know, and we apologize for this,” Lassesen says at Hurtigruten.

– They have tried to hide it

Mike says they all got tested before leaving the Philippines, one time. A swab test. But they were not quarantined as Hurtigruten claimed in Dagens Næringsliv.

The Filipinos we met in Kristiansand say they were afraid. Fear of the crown. Even two of the people NRK spoke to got infected and got sick.

But they are also afraid of taking on leadership.

They don’t want to lose the life of the crown, but they don’t want to lose the job that is so important. They all have family that they feed.

– Have you been asked not to speak to the press?

– Yes, from the beginning they told us that we should not look towards the port side, because there was a lot of pressure. We should not talk to journalists like you and not post anything on social media, especially Facebook. So they have tried to hide this, says Chris.

– I don’t understand why they wanted to hide it. Maybe because they want to continue with the cruises? Chris asks.

When asked directly whether Hurtigruten has tried to hide the outbreak, Lassesen at Hurtigruten replies, “No.”

– But Filipinos are afraid to confront management with their concerns, because they are afraid of losing their jobs. What do you answer to this?

– It’s high indoors at Hurtigruten, and we have the attitude that so much comment, criticism and advocacy is allowed. We also have a close and good dialogue with shop stewards about working conditions on all of our ships, Lassesen says.

– we will be open

When asked if Hurtigruten has asked employees not to speak to the press, she responds:

– Hurtigruten is and will be open. As an employer, we don’t place restrictions on individual employees expressing their opinions, Lassesen says.

NRK previously attempted to contact the Philippine crew through Hurtigruten’s communications department.

The last attempt was on August 31.

But when Roald Amundsen was due to leave Tromsø the same day, NRK was instructed to wait behind a fence. The crew was busy and had to be examined, was the explanation.

Only later, after departure, was NRK contacted with an offer of a telephone interview with a captain and a crew member from the Philippines.

The captain had met six days in advance and was not part of the crew during the eruption. The Filipino worker had been on board since before the crown crisis.

Both describe Hurtigruten as a very satisfying employer and workplace.

And also several times during the interview with the Filipinos that we meet in Kristiansand, they emphasize how much they appreciate the work.

They consider the salary to be good even though their contracts are known as slave contracts, and they praise the good working environment on board.

Many questions

Mens:

– As a team, we follow the bosses. So my life is in their hands and they really put it in danger, says Sonny.

– So at least give us a respectable compensation because you didn’t follow protocol, says Sonny and goes directly to Hurtigruten management.

They do it through me. And Sonny, Chris, Mike and Susi have a lot of questions.

How’s the ship investigation going? What do the police do? Like Tom’s “Fridtjof Nansen” cruise ship, are they entitled to Norwegian pay?

After all, they work full days on the Kristiansand pier. In Norway. Yes, just like Fridtjof Nansen’s Filipino crew.

– Our life in the Philippines is very difficult. We try to work on the other side of the world to provide for our families, to give them a better life. Sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut, says Sonny.

“Otherwise, in my country, if they found out that I was talking to you, they would not give us the opportunity to go back to work,” he says.

– Even in the Philippines?

– Yes, and even here with the address. Why should they hire me when they work for the company? So we don’t have a voice, says Sonny.

Will publish the investigation

Lassesen at Hurtigruten says they have a strong understanding that everyone wants as much information as possible.

– It is also especially important to us that all information shared within Hurtigruten and with the press and others around us is correctly confirmed. We have prioritized working with internal information sharing largely in the aftermath of the infection outbreak in July, he says.

– We have also initiated an external investigation of the law firm Wiersholm and DNV GL, which will give us a complete overview of the entire course of events. All Hurtigruten employees, along with the public, will have access to the investigative report, Lassesen says.