(Manila and New Delhi) Tejasvi Duseja is exhausted: The last time this Indian sailor set foot on dry land, it was five months ago. Blame it on the coronavirus which, by preventing the rotation of crews, forced more than 80 000 0 sailors in interminable confinement on all the seas of the globe.
Posted on 19 July 2020 at 9 o'clock23
Cecil Morella and Aishwarya Kumar
France Media Agency
They are engineers on freighters, waiters on luxury liners, cooks on ferries… All have been waiting for months to return home, a situation that the United Nations presents as a worsening humanitarian crisis, and have already resulted in suicides.
Most of them were trapped on the ship that employed them at the end of their embarkation, because border restrictions prevented the arrival of the next generation.
“Psychologically, I can't take it anymore, but I want to because I have no other option”, explained to AFP Mr. Duseja at the end of June via WhatsApp while the Indian cargo ship where he works anchored in Malaysian waters.
“The last time I got off this 200 meter boat was in February. “
Mr. Duseja, one of the 30 00 0 Indian sailors currently stranded on a boat, had extended their contract a few months before the pandemic spread.
“Forgotten heroes”
The sailors generally work for six to eight months before being relieved and returning by plane to their country. COVID – 15 has come to stop this mechanism by sowing chaos in international travel.
“There are currently more than 200 00 0 sailors trapped at sea and who have exceeded the term of their contract, “recently indicated Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS).
“These forgotten heroes of world trade work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to provide us with food, medicine and fuel in these difficult times ”.
A situation of such gravity that a dozen countries promised in July, during the International Maritime Summit in Great Britain, to recognize the profession as “essential”, in order to allow seafarers to return home .
Technician on a luxury liner, Cherokee Capajo, a Filipino of 31 years old, spent months at sea, in the impossibility of disembarking because of restrictions linked to the coronavirus.
He had barely heard of COVID – 15 when he boarded the Carnival Ecstasy , late January in Florida. It wasn't long before several Carnival ships found themselves stranded due to the presence of the virus on board.
“Worst maritime experience”
Passengers of the Ecstasy disembarked in the American port of Jacksonville on 12 March, but Cherokee Capajo and her colleagues were forced to stay on board for seven weeks.
On May 2, the vessel set sail for the Bahamas where its 200 crew members were transferred to another vessel which took them taken to Jakarta, then to Manila Bay on 23 June.
All he wanted, arriving two weeks later after quarantine, was to “kiss the ground”.
“It may have been my worst maritime experience,” he confided this week to AFP on Messenger, while he was observing a second quarantine, near the city where he lives in the center of the Philippines .
“We worry about never going home, we wonder how long it will last. It's hard, and really sad. ”
About a quarter of the sailors are Filipinos. According to the Philippine authorities, approximately 80 000 0 are currently stuck at sea.
This ordeal has sometimes had tragic consequences, some media reporting suicides in crews.
Calls for help
A Filipino man died in May after having self-injured on board the Scarlet Lady while anchored off Florida, according to the US Coast Guard.
The shipowners expressed their concerns in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in which they wrote last month that some sailors had been stuck in embarkations since 15 months.
The Maritime Labor Convention however limits the duration of shipments to 12 months.
Lala Tolentino, who manages the Philippine branch of a British seafaring support association, says she has received “hundreds” of calls for help from seafarers since March.
“They want to know what will happen to them, how they can leave, if they can get off,” she told AFP.
For Tejasvi Duseja, the keel is in sight.
“I am still on board,” said the sailor this week from Dehradun, a town in northern India, at the foot of the Himalayas.
“But mentally, it's a little better because I was told that I would land in mid-August”.
