Bid farewell to 2020, but remember the seafarers

THAT is it, then. We've somehow managed to get through 2020. A year ago, we were all expecting the following 12 months to be particularly challenging. The shipping industry was about to switch to low sulphur fuel, something that raised the spectre of various potential nightmare scenarios ranging from engine breakdowns causing catastrophes to widespread shortage of compliant fuel disrupting trade.

As things have turned out, complying with the 0.50 per cent sulphur in fuel regulation has been relatively trouble-free. With few exceptions, there has been enough compliant fuel. There have been some issues - regulatory ones over whether particular fuel was compliant, and technical ones including wax formation, sludging, and increased cylinder wear. In general however the industry has taken the "big switch" in its stride.

What we didn't know a year ago was that the world was about to be hit by a pandemic, a global health emergency way beyond anything encountered within living memory.

As remarked on last week, the economic effects have been mixed. Nevertheless, when whole-year figures for trade volumes and company results are published they are unlikely to make cheerful reading.

We don't need to wait for annual reports to know what Covid-19 has done to the cruise industry. It is difficult to think of any sector worldwide that has been hit harder than cruising. Even aviation has managed to keep going, even though passenger flights are at only a tiny percentage of pre-pandemic flights. Cruising, however, come to an almost a complete stop. Early attempts at recovery didn't succeed and whole fleet is either laid up or, in more than a few cases now, filling up demolition berths.

From about April for several months, the plight of cruise ship crews unable to get off their vessels to return home regularly made the headlines. This brings us to what is the real story on the pandemic and shipping. Broadly speaking, most of those crews did eventually get home after months of delay. However, much less attention was paid to the crews of the rest of the world's commercial fleet.

So the big shipping story - and the big shame - of 2020 has got to be the crew-change crisis. Despite pleas from the industry and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the crisis has got worse.

A lot of the focus has, quite rightly, been on persuading countries where crew changes can take place to treat seafarers as key workers and facilitate their leaving and joining vessels. Just before Christmas, however, the spotlight was shone on an aspect of the shipping business that is feeding into the crisis.

IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim has spoke out against "no crew change" clauses in charterparties, pointing out that such clauses "exacerbate the dire situation of stranded seafarers and undermine the efforts undertaken to resolve the ongoing crew change crisis".

These clauses, which are demanded by certain charterers, state that no crew changes can occur while the charterer's cargo is on board. This means the ship is not allowed to deviate to ports where crew changes could take place. Apparently, IMO's Seafarer Crisis Action Team (SCAT) had recently been made aware of this worrying development.

"No crew change" clauses should be rejected

In a strong statement issued on Dec 18, supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Mr Lim called upon all charterers to refrain from requests to include "no crew change" clauses in charterparties, and further called upon shipowners and operators to reject them if they are demanded.

"Such clauses exacerbate the mental and physical fatigue among exhausted seafarers, undermine compliance with the provisions of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, as amended (MLC, 2006) and further threaten the safety of navigation," Mr Lim said. He added that alternative contractual clauses that do allow for crew changes during the pandemic are available and should be utilised.

It would actually be instructive to know which charterers were insisting on these clauses. Sometimes, it is justifiable to name names, point fingers. I imagine rumours will soon start to circulate as to who is involved.

The IMO statement drawing attention to this issue also made it clear that the crisis is not abating. It said that after 10 months, "hundreds of thousands of seafarers remain onboard ships well beyond the expiration of their seafarer employment agreements, some not being paid and all unable to be repatriated".

It added: "A similar number remain unable to join ships, and as a result find themselves unable to begin their contracts and earn a living."

"The situation continues to constitute a humanitarian crisis that threatens not only seafarers' health and wellbeing but also the safety of navigation and the uninterrupted flow of the global supply chain", Mr Lim insisted, adding: "Policies or practices that prevent or inhibit safe, regular crew changes should be revised or eliminated."

As of Dec 18, 46 IMO member states, including Singapore, had designated seafarers as key workers. As the IMO stressed, it is essential to exempt these professionals from specific Covid-related travel restrictions.

Going forward into 2021, the crew-change crisis is far from over. The logistics could become even more difficult as vaccination programmes are rolled out worldwide. Protocols to allow seafarers to have evidence of vaccination that will be universally accepted will be needed to avoid chaos.