[HN Gopher] Renewing our respect for invisible essential workers...
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Renewing our respect for invisible essential workers of the seas
Author : jonbaer
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-07-02 06:05 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.marinetraffic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.marinetraffic.com)
| bkor wrote:
| > [..] In March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic spread across
| the world, travel restrictions left hundreds of thousands of
| seafarers stuck onboard their ships, working way past their
| contracted dates as they were unable to return to shore for
| repatriation.
|
| > At the time, few states acknowledged seafarers as key workers,
| making travel extremely difficult, if not impossible. Since then
| a number of countries have acknowledged their status and more
| recently, certain states have rolled out vaccination programmes.
|
| Imagine being at the at of a very long working period, months on
| sea. Then at the end you're asked to work for several more
| months. This as your relief cannot travel to you. Many additional
| months later you finally can be relieved. Except now there's
| still the issue of leaving the vessel, many countries ban you
| from leaving the vessel (often cannot even go to shore).
| Meanwhile the big shipping companies have been reaching out to
| their governments to try and fix this. Just to be ignored,
| basically.
|
| Only a month ago or so I noticed The Netherlands vaccinating
| everyone on a Dutch flagged vessel. This instead of only
| vaccinating the Dutch people on a Dutch vessel.
|
| It's quite shameful how these seafarers were treated by pretty
| much every country in the world.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Egypt (home of the Suez Canal) has done some pretty ugly things
| to the people who had been staffing abandoned vessels. Take
| this guy, who was essentially imprisoned aboard for four years
| without power, communications, or the like:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506.amp
| okl wrote:
| There's a 101 East episode on Al Jazeera on that topic:
| https://www.aljazeera.com/program/101-east/2021/7/1/forgotte...
| eutectic wrote:
| Also a good episode of the podcast '99% Invisible' on the
| topic (although not specifically in the context of COVID-19).
| drukenemo wrote:
| Who except for very prominent professionals are not invisible to
| the world at large?
|
| It's a nice article and it's good to remind us of the amount of
| individuals dedicated to activities in the ocean.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| "Firefighters". "Doctors". "Police". Heck, even garbagemen are
| more visible to the world at large.
| dominotw wrote:
| Forget about respect, how about basic human rights.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thaila...
| poopsmithe wrote:
| "essential workers" has been my least favorite invention in
| recent memory. If a person is providing value to their community,
| they are essential.
| dugmartin wrote:
| It has been that way for a while. Fun fact: during WWII merchant
| marines got the short shift. The died at a much higher rate than
| soldiers and sailors and when they got back they were denied
| veterans benefits including the GI Bill.
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(page generated 2021-07-02 23:02 UTC)