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India’s huge new wave of Covid-19 infections has affected the country-dependent international shipping industry for seafarers as crews fall ill and ports deny entry to ships.
Ports such as Singapore and Fujairah in the UAE have banned ships from changing crew members who have recently traveled from India, according to warnings from maritime authorities. Zhoushan in China has banned entry to any ship or crew that has visited India or Bangladesh in the past three months, according to Wilhelmsen Ship Management, a major supplier of maritime crews.
Industry executives also claim that crews from India test positive for Covid-19 on ships, despite being quarantined and testing negative before boarding.
“Previously we had infected ships with one or two people,” said Rajesh Unni, chief executive of Singapore-based Synergy Marine Group, which provides the ship’s crew. “Today we have a scenario in which entire ships are becoming infected very quickly. . . which means that the ships themselves are immobilized. “
India on Wednesday reported more than 380,000 Covid-19 infections and nearly 3,800 deaths. An increase in cases has broken world records and overflowing health systems.
The South African port authority said a ship arriving in Durban from India this week was quarantined after 14 Filipino crew tested positive for Covid-19. The ship’s chief engineer died of a heart attack.
Along with the Philippines and China, India is one of the world’s leading sources of crew. According to the body of industry, the International Chamber of Shipping, approximately 240,000 seafarers worldwide are 1.6 million.
Singapore, a major maritime hub, has extended its ban to crews from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Executives warned that the restrictions could send shockwaves to the widespread shipping industry, which carries 80 percent of world trade, according to UN data.
The blockade of the Suez Canal in March “will be nothing compared to the [supply chain] the interruption for not being able to change crew, ”said Mark O’Neil, president of InterManager, which represents the crew management industry.
Last summer, some 400,000 sailors were stranded at sea beyond their contractual duration due to the pandemic. Although this figure has fallen, fears are growing due to the global increase in coronavirus cases since March.
“If travel restrictions continue as they are, we could once again be in a situation similar to the global crew change crisis we saw in 2020,” said Niels Bruus, head of marine human resources at Maersk, the shipping company. of largest containers in the world. .
“The situation has gone from bad to worse when it comes to crew changes. And that’s an understatement, ”said Carl Schou, chief executive of Wilhelmsen, which comes from 15% of its roughly 10,000 workers in India.
The Norwegian-owned company stopped crew changes in India from April 24 until at least the end of May. Schou added that the results of the Covid-19 tests for Indian navigators did not arrive in time for their scheduled departures, as “the whole healthcare system has basically crashed in India.”
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, a German crew management group, said it was temporarily turning to seafarers from other nations to replace Indians landed or scheduled aboard ships.
Navigation executives said seafarers should be given priority in the global deployment of vaccinations as countries introduce requirements for inoculation. But they have been frustrated by the slow pace of efforts to get laundry through the International Maritime Organization, the UN body responsible for shipping.
“We’re just getting our hair done with bureaucracy and political ping-pong discussing this vaccination issue,” O’Neil said.
Abdulgani Serang, secretary general of the National Union of Sailors of India, said he believes the authorities have not done enough to vaccinate Indian sailors: “We have failed them.”
Additional reports from Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi
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