Desperation grows for 200,000 seafarers stranded on ships worldwide
Indian ship worker Tejasvi Duseja is desperate to go back home after months stranded offshore by coronavirus border closures and lockdowns which may have left a lot more than 200,000 seafarers in limbo.
From engineers on cargo ships to waiters on luxury cruise liners, ocean-based workers all over the world have been swept up in what the US warns is a growing humanitarian crisis that has been blamed for many suicides.
Many have been trapped on vessels for months after their tours were supposed to end as travel restrictions disrupted normal crew rotations.
"Mentally, I am just finished with it... but I'm still holding up because I've no other option," Duseja, 27, told AFP via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in late June as the Indian-owned cargo vessel he works on floated near Malaysia.
Duseja, among roughly 30,000 Indian workers unable to leave their ships, had extended his seven-month contract a couple of months prior to the pandemic struck.
"The last time I stepped faraway from this 200-metre (650-foot) ship was in February," he said.
Seafarers typically work for 6 to 8 months at a time before disembarking and flying back again to their home countries, with new crews taking their place.
But as the deadly virus whipped all over the world and paralysed international travel, that was suddenly impossible.
Underscoring the growing urgency of the situation, greater than a dozen countries at a UK-hosted International Maritime Summit this month vowed to discover seafarers as "key workers" to help them get home.
Philippine luxury cruise ship technician Cherokee Capajo spent almost four months on ships without setting foot on land because of virus shutdowns.
The 31-year-old had barely heard about Covid-19 when he boarded the Carnival Ecstasy in Florida in late January.
Soon, several Carnival-owned cruise lines were stricken with extreme outbreaks - like the Diamond Princess in Japan.
Following the Ecstasy passengers disembarked 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 sailed to the Bahamas where Capajo says he and 1,200 crew members were used in another boat that took them to Jakarta before arriving in Manila Bay on June 29.
He wished to "kiss the bottom" when he came ashore practically fourteen days later after finishing quarantine.
"This could oftimes be the hardest part of my experience as a seaman because you are not sure exactly 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'll ever come back home, how long are you considering stuck on the ship. It's difficult. It's really sad."
Filipinos take into account around a quarter of the world's seafarers. About 80,000 of them are stranded as a result of the pandemic, according to Philippine authorities.
The ordeal has taken a toll on the mental health of several seafarers, with reports of some taking their own lives.
In one case, a Filipino worker died of "apparent self-harm" on the cruise liner Scarlet Lady as it anchored off Florida in May, in line with the US Coast Guard.
Shipping industry groups have expressed their concerns about "suicide and self-harm" among workers in a joint letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said last month some seafarers have been "marooned at sea for 15 months."
An International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention widely known as the Seafarers' Bill of Rights limits a worker's single tour of duty to significantly less than 12 months.
The strain is also being felt by families waiting in the home.
Priyamvada Basanth said she did not know when she would see her husband who has been 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 southern Indian port of Kochi.
"I simply want him to come home."
Lala Tolentino, who runs the Philippine office for a UK-based seafarers support group, said they had been swamped by "hundreds" o
f pleas for help from stranded workers since March.
"They want to really know what will happen to them, where they go. Will they be able to get off their ships," she told AFP.
A lot of those stuck onboard completed their tours a lot more than four months ago and were exhausted, the ILO said last month.
For Duseja, who originates from the northern Indian city of Dehradun at the foothills of the Himalayas, the finish of his ordeal is around the corner.
"I'm still on the ship," he told AFP in a WhatsApp message last week.
"But mentally, I am feeling slightly better because I've been told that I'm finally moving away from the ship mid-August." - AFP
