Seafarers' shift crisis remains acute, with many governments failing to deliver on promises

Despite the commitment of governments to increase vaccination rates, the crew shift problem persists. Thanks to Omicron, the crew shift crisis has not yet seen the light of day, even at the end of 2021. Since 2020, crews have often been forced to work beyond the 11-month limit set by the Maritime Labour Convention 2006. At the beginning, before the new coronavirus mutated, most people, despite paying lip service to helping seafarers change shifts, were in fact adopting a 'wait and see' strategy, reassuring seafarers and observing what others were doing, while repeatedly avoiding options to enable crew to change shifts during the development of the epidemic. As the virus continued to mutate and become more dangerous, all the wait and see strategies had to fail, so it was inevitable that by 2022, we would have to come up with a real solution to the crisis. At the worst time this year, it is estimated that some 400,000 crew members were affected by travel and quarantine restrictions. Natalie Shaw, head of employment at the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), says this year will be even tougher than 2020. Most of us in 2020 were naive enough to think that the crew shift crisis would only last six months at most." And by the end of the year, seafarers will still be experiencing problems with flights, quarantine facilities and medical services on a "daily" basis. Natalie Shaw, director of employment at the International Chamber of Shipping, said that governments were not "walking the talk" when it came to recognising seafarers as key workers. Back to square one Bjorn Hojgaard, chief executive of Sino-British Shipping Management, said that hopes of ending the crew crisis by 2021 had been dashed with the emergence of a new variant of the virus. In addition, he fears that the shipping industry may be going back to the beginning of the crisis. In fact, hopes were dashed in April this year," he says. At that time the Delta mutant strain was sweeping the world and many countries, particularly those east of the Suez Canal, chose to further tighten their crew change regulations. Eight months have passed and the situation is not much better. The toxicity of the new Omicron variant is still unknown and could become even worse." To help address the crew shift crisis, several organisations in the shipping industry have formed and joined the Neptune Declaration organisation to represent the interests of seafarers. According to the latest figures from the Neptune Manifesto, the number of seafarers with overstayed contracts fell to 4.7% from 7.1% in November. The number of seafarers working for more than 11 months has fallen from 1% to 0.7%. Although the figures are improving, V.Group Chairman Graham Westgarth (a key figure in the Neptune Manifesto) says the challenges facing crews remain outstanding. Key workers? On 1 December 2020, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognising seafarers as "key workers". Graham believes that the responsibility for solving the problem lies primarily with governments. Some governments have still not delivered on their promise to enable seafarers to travel as key workers without excessive restrictions. Now that a year has passed since the UN General Assembly recognised seafarers as key workers, it is a good time for the UN to review the resolution. ICS's Shaw believes that individual governments have taken seafarers too lightly. "Although many countries have designated seafarers as key workers, they have failed to 'practice what they preach' and have only paid lip service to the needs of their crews," she says. Hojgaard, of Chung Ying Ship Management, concludes, "Seafarers start work without their families. They usually don't have shore leave and have to guess whether they will work as contracted, and have to worry about not having state permission to go ashore for treatment if they fall ill at work. How is this possible?" Graham Westgarth, Chairman of V.Group, said that the fact that vaccines are not yet standardised globally also poses a problem for crew shift changes. There are still differences in the standard vaccines used by countries and it is believed that international harmonisation would be much better if it were achieved as soon as possible. The US began offering the new crown vaccine to seafarers in May this year and has even set up vaccination centres in major ports around the world so that crews don't miss their second dose. Graham says: "Vaccine deficiency chemistry can lead to seafarers being given a nationally approved vaccine but once at sea and in another country, the vaccine they received in their home country is not necessarily recognised." Shaw said, "With the further increase in the transmission of new strains and the increasing number of cases now in Asia and Europe, we are in a period of great uncertainty here and there is really no way to predict how long we will face these difficulties." Graham added that the shipping industry now needs something that is universally accepted internationally, standardised and can be administered in conjunction with other vaccines. Also, it would be great to have internationally harmonised requirements for seafarers' travel and transit.