{"id":11738,"date":"2020-06-16T17:21:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/weary-sailors-pose-risk-to-world-merchant-fleet-kitack-lim\/11738\/"},"modified":"2020-06-16T17:21:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:21:30","slug":"weary-sailors-pose-risk-to-world-merchant-fleet-kitack-lim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/weary-sailors-pose-risk-to-world-merchant-fleet-kitack-lim\/11738\/","title":{"rendered":"Weary Sailors Pose Risk to World Merchant Fleet -Kitack Lim"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hundreds of thousands of weary seafarers stuck on ships for many months and unable to go home due to the coronavirus pose a risk to the safe operation of the world\u2019s merchant fleet, the UN\u2019s shipping chief said on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

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About 90% of world trade is transported by sea and continued complications with changing over ship crews due to restrictions in some jurisdictions is still affecting supply chains despite an easing of lockdown in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n

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Kitack Lim, Secretary-General of the UN\u2019s International Maritime Organization, said some seafarers had been marooned at sea for 15 months, over the 11 month maximum laid out in a maritime labor convention, which he described as a \u201chumanitarian crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is now a real safety issue, endangering the safe operation of ships. We cannot expect seafarers to stay at sea forever,\u201d Lim told a Capital Link digital forum.<\/p>\n

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\u201cGovernments must allow shipping to continue moving by getting seafarers to their homes, and to their ships to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The International Transport Workers\u2019 Federation (ITF), which represents seafarers, told seafarers on Monday that it was no longer acceptable to force crews to work.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you have finished your contract, then you have the right to be repatriated. If this is not possible then you would remain on board as a passenger,\u201d the ITF said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe consequences could be that the ship is unable to sail if the manning level is inadequate, but that is not the responsibility of the seafarers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Guy Platten, of the International Chamber of Shipping, said the scale of crew changes was huge given 200,000 seafarers on board ships had to be replaced with 200,000 colleagues ashore.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt this point it\u2019s a question of political will,\u201d Platten said.<\/p>\n

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(Editing by Giles Elgood)<\/em><\/p>\n

maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands of weary seafarers stuck on ships for many months and unable to go home due to the coronavirus pose a risk to the safe operation of the world\u2019s merchant fleet, the UN\u2019s shipping chief said on Tuesday. About 90% of world trade is transported by sea and continued complications with changing over …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1973,3552,3553,423,1492,87,2175,7723,1185],"class_list":["post-11738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-fleet","tag-kitack","tag-lim","tag-merchant","tag-pose","tag-risk","tag-sailors","tag-weary","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/11739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}