Indian worker Tejasvi Duseja is desperate to return home after months stranded at sea by coronavirus closings and closings that have left more than 200,000 seafarers in limbo.
From engineers on cargo ships to waiters on luxury cruise ships, ocean-based workers around the world have been caught up in what the UN warns is a mounting humanitarian crisis blaming several suicides.
Many have been trapped in boats for months after their voyages were supposed to end, as travel restrictions disrupted normal crew rotations.
“Mentally, I just finished with that … but I keep holding on because I have no choice,” Duseja, 27, told the AFP news agency via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in late June as the cargo ship. Indian owned. works on floating near Malaysia.
Duseja, one of the approximately 30,000 Indian workers who cannot abandon their ships, had extended his seven-month contract a few months before the pandemic occurred.
“The last time I got off this 200 meter [650-foot] the boat was in February, “he said.
Seafarers generally work six to eight months in a row before disembarking and flying back to their home countries, with new crews taking their place.
But when the deadly virus hit the world and paralyzed international travel, that was suddenly impossible.
Underlining the growing urgency of the situation, more than a dozen countries at an International Maritime Summit organized by the United Kingdom this month pledged to recognize seafarers as “key workers” to help them get home.
‘You worry if you ever come home’
Philippine luxury cruise technician Cherokee Capajo spent nearly four months on ships without stepping ashore due to virus stops.
The 31-year-old had barely heard of COVID-19 when he boarded the Carnival Ecstasy in Florida in late January.
Soon, several Carnival-owned cruises suffered serious outbreaks, including the Diamond Princess in Japan.
After the Ecstasy passengers landed in Jacksonville on March 14, Capajo and his colleagues were forced to remain on board for the next seven weeks.
Finally, on May 2, the ship set sail for the Bahamas, where Capajo says that he and 1,200 crew members were transferred to another boat that took them to Jakarta before reaching Manila Bay on June 29.
He wanted to “kiss the ground” when he came ashore almost two weeks after the quarantine ended.
“This could be the most difficult part of my experience as a sailor because you are not sure what will happen every day,” Capajo told AFP via Facebook Messenger last week, as he endured a second quarantine near his hometown. in the central Philippines.
“You worry if you ever come home, how long will you be stuck on the ship. It’s difficult. It’s really sad.”
Filipinos represent about a quarter of the world’s seafarers. According to Philippine authorities, approximately 80,000 of them are stranded due to the pandemic.
Mental toll on workers
The terrible experience has affected the mental health of many seafarers, with reports that some committed suicide.
In one case, a Filipino worker died of “apparent self-harm” on the Scarlet Lady cruise ship when she was anchoring off Florida in May, according to the United States. coastguard.
Shipping industry groups expressed concern about “suicide and self-harm” among workers in a joint letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said last month that some sailors were “abandoned at sea during 15 months”.
A convention of the International Labor Organization (ILO) widely known as the Declaration of Rights of Seafarers limits the period of single service of a worker to less than 12 months.
Tension is also felt by families waiting at home.
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Priyamvada Basanth said she did not know when she would see her husband who was at sea for eight months on a ship owned by a Hong Kong company.
“The government is not even doing anything,” said Basanth, from the port city of Kochi in southern India. “I just want him to come home.”
Lala Tolentino, who heads the Philippine office for a UK-based seafarers’ support group, said they had been overwhelmed by “hundreds” of requests for help from stranded workers since March.
“They want to know what will happen to them, where they are going. They will be able to get off their boats,” he told AFP.
Many of those trapped on board completed their tours more than four months ago and were exhausted, the ILO said last month.
For Duseja, who comes from the city of Dehradun, in the north of India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, the end of her terrible experience looms.
“I am still on the boat,” he told AFP in a WhatsApp message last week.
“But mentally, I feel a little better because I was told that I will finally get off the ship in mid-August.”
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