Day of the Seafarer 2020
Day of the Seafarer 2020
Seafarers as key workers
Every year the International Maritime Organization (IMO) celebrates seafarers at the Day of the Seafarer.
The people working on board of the approximately 55.000 ships our global fleet counts, play an important role in maintaining the flow of vital goods. Shipping is vital to flow trade and an essential part of the global supply chain.
Even in good times, seafarers are the unsung heroes of our global economy. During the global Covid-19 pandemic they have kept on working to keep us all supplied. The crisis has led to difficult working conditions for seafarers. Crew changes are made nearly impossible, following the measures that governments and local authorities implemented since outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. Approximately 200.000 seafarers are stuck at sea. A problem with massive proportions.
They deserve our appreciation, now more than ever.
This year the IMO we raise awareness around this critical situation at the Day of the Seafarer. By sharing stories on social media with #SeafarersAsKeyWorkers everyone can help to highlight the problem.
The ultimate goal is for governments to recognize seafarers as key workers. And provide them with the support, assistance and travel options necessary, as for all key workers during the pandemic.
AIM wants to give a big THANK YOU to all seafarers. We hope the situation will improve for all of you shortly. And wish you all the best.
In the meantime, we do our best to provide guidance, illness recovery and rehabilitation to medical repatriated crew members. Even at times of the extreme community quarantine lockdown in The Philippines, AIM stayed committed to helping seafarers. Providing our clients with our services.
Despite the lockdown measures, we continued to monitor seafarers with pending medical treatment and scheduled visits to doctors. To check on the condition of repatriated seafarers, the people of AIM made regular calls, video chat and consultations with them. AIM listened to their concerns, explaining the situation, provided moral support and answered any concerns or questions they had. This proved to be very useful since it helped to ease them and for AIM to come up with its assessment on whether their condition was worsening or improving.
The biggest challenge for AIM was the assistance upon arrival for the repatriated seafarers during the extreme community quarantine lockdown period.
With complex coordination to doctors, medical experts, transport providers and hospitals we managed to provide local manning agencies support for their repatriated seafarers. Crew members were fetched from the airport by people of AIM and brought directly to the hospitals under strict supervision. For those that did not require confinement in the hospital, AIM was able to arrange facilities maintained by their local manning agencies after their medical check-up.
We hope that sharing our story helps seafarers that are currently stuck on board, to feel somewhat supported. As we want to let them know that there are many people on shore that genuinely care about them.
