Four months without pay and 48 hours without food, 47 seafarers off the coast of the UK are desperate to get home to their families.
As the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions put in place to attempt containment drag on, around 200,000 merchant seafarers are trapped aboard ships in violation of international law.
There’s 11,086 kilometres between São Sebastião, Brazil and the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. It’s those eleven thousand kilometres ITF Inspector Renialdo de Freitas has been working to get 16 Ukrainian seafarers back across, to their homes and families.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has been assisting hundreds of seafarers aboard the six Global Cruise Lines’ vessels currently in Tilbury and Bristol, in the United Kingdom.
The race to develop a Covid-19 response that controls the virus, protects people and provides relief for battered economies is an urgent priority.
Seafarers in their unions are putting more pressure on the world’s governments to allow for crew changes, as more than 200,000 seafarers are now trapped aboard vessels working beyond their contracts.
The Mauritian government recently announced it would finally open its doors to the thousands of its own seafarers trapped around the world – but only by a slight crack.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) today branded the New South Wales Government’s inquiry into the Ruby Princess as a ‘smokescreen’ for the government’s failings in the second phase of the Ruby Princess saga aft
The IMO is the global standard-setting authority for the safety, security and environmental performance of international shipping.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has called on the world’s governments to act swiftly to give seafarers visa, border and quarantine exemptions in order to make crew changes possible and resolve the present crisis.
