Independent journal on economy and transport policy
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ICS and ITF call on the UN to make governments understand that maritime transport is crucial to tackling the coronavirus crisis
In particular, it highlighted the need for seafarers to be given the status of essential workers
March 19, 2020
"As the Covid-19 pandemic spreads -- they explained Platten and Cotton -- it is crucial that all governments keep trade operational continuing to allow worldwide access to ports to commercial vessels and facilitating the movement and rapid turnover of ship crews."
Platten and Cotton recalled that "every month, for comply with international working time regulations well-being of the crews, about 100,000 seafarers must be replaced by the ships on which they operate, so that they can continue to carry global trade safely. We would therefore like to emphasise the vital need - they specified -- that professional seafarers from all over the world appropriate exemptions from any national restriction to journeys when they have to board their ships or have to leave them, In order to keep the maritime chains running supply of the world."
"In view of their vital role during pandemic - wrote the secretaries-general of the ICS and ITF - we suggest that professional seafarers, regardless of nationality, they must be treated like any other "indispensable worker" international, as well as airline crews and healthcare professionals. As such, they should be given a attention and, except for the need to comply with emergency health protocols, treated with pragmatism and understanding when they try to travel from or directed to their ships. So we ask your organizations to highlight to the governments of your Member States the importance critical of this problem.'
"We urgently ask - concluded Platten and Cotton - this topic is added to the agenda of appropriate high-level meetings and that national Member States of your organisations are encouraged to immediately confront their national association of owners and with the National Maritime Union in order to find quick fixes to this serious problem that otherwise risks hampering global efforts to tackle the pandemic Covid-19."
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"As the Covid-19 pandemic spreads -- they explained Platten and Cotton -- it is crucial that all governments keep trade operational continuing to allow worldwide access to ports to commercial vessels and facilitating the movement and rapid turnover of ship crews."
- Via Raffaele Paolucci 17r/19r - 16129 Genoa - ITALY
