Abstract
COVID-19 has quickly spread in various parts of the world. A number of countries or cities launched “lock down” policies and stringent social distancing measures. As such, the maritime industry needs to rely on healthy and professional seafarers to support the emergency logistics operations with a short period of time. However, seafarers are classified as a COVID-19 high-risk and vulnerable group. In order to ease global severe pandemic situation, the cancellation of crew change policy has been introduced. Such policy intensifies the challenges of seafarers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, there is an increasing trend of seafarers may changing their working area or occupation and refusing to sail. As such, the study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the global shipping market and seafarer market, investigate the current COVID-19 policies and measures affecting seafarers, explore the key challenges of seafarers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and suggest possible ways to improve the wellbeing and working conditions of seafarers under the COVID-19 context.
TopIntroduction
Starting from the late 19th century, shipping has performed a vital role of economic development and human progress in every country. To the best of our authors’ knowledge, shipping is identified as one of the oldest industries in the world. At an early stage, it was observed that man carrying eatables on wooden boats. Now, shipping is a fast-paced and significantly advanced industry. Shipping was one of the few industries that maintained 24/7 daily operations to make sure that there was a constant import and export of commodities and necessities between two geographical points (Donepudi, 2014).
Shipping has been a backbone of economic development for over a century (Lau et al., 2017). Various countries rely on shipping business due to international trades and transactions need vessels to deliver cargoes between the place of production and the place of consumption. The father of economics, Adam Smith recognized shipping as a supply of low cost transport that could potentially develop and expand markets (Stopford, 2004). Smith (1776) mentioned that “by means of water carriage a more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry … it is upon the sea-coast that industry of every kind naturally begins to subdivide and improve itself”. In other words, maritime transport fosters specialization that give the means to sell the products at low prices.
In the past 60 years, the shipping industry has been significantly changed by the enlargement of international trade, complex supply chain management, advanced technological development, and intermodalism (Lau et al., 2013). In response, shipping firms operate on a large-scale fostering the globalization of trade and induces geographical expansion. Besides, shipping firms have taken advantage of widening and broadening of the variety of services to facilitate them to surpass customers’ expectations. To make use of business opportunities, shipping firms deliver thorough shipping services like enlarging their vessel sizes, improving the service frequency, and offering a diversified market sector (Yip et al., 2012).
In general, tramp shipping and liner shipping are two main shipping market sectors. On the one hand, tramp shipping carries cargoes in full shiploads from one port to another and operates without a fixed schedule and routing. On the other hand, liner shipping carries cargoes in less than full shiploads and operates fixed routing and schedule (Lau et al., 2013). Nevertheless, both shipping market sectors recognized that they need to conduct scale operations and comply with international safety and environmental regulations. In this sense, there is an increasing trend of shipping firms operate a sophisticated and larger size of vessels to maintain competitive advantages. To this end, shipping firms urgently demand for recruiting numerous professional seafarers to support vessels daily voyage operations. However, Lau and Yip (2017) addressed that seafarers’ working conditions and well-being are seriously ignored by shipping firms, industrial associations, government, policymakers, and International Labor Organization (ILO). In general, seafarers face a common problem and challenges including (1) adverse working and living conditions; (2) poor health conditions; (3) stringent maritime laws; (4) onboard politics; (5) hectic life; (6) insufficient social life; (7) emergence of maritime piracy; and (8) chronic diseases. To this end, such unfavorable conditions discourage young generations to consider becoming a seafarer as their career paths after graduation. After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, numerous maritime countries or territories adopted lock down policy and social distancing measures. It is unlucky to discover different confirmed cases of COVID-19 have arisen from seafarers. Accordingly, various port authorities implemented the cancellation of crew change to minimize the transmission of virus in order to ease the global severe pandemic circumstances. Such policy only intensifies seafarers suffer from work-related stress and mental health problems. More and more seafarers are inclined towards changing their working area or occupation and refusing to perform sail duties. As a result, there is a serious shortage of seafarers in shipping industry due to the cancellation of crew change policy.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Seafarers: Seafarers are people who travel regularly on the sea or people who work on vessels.
Maritime Industry: The maritime industry deals with the operating of vessels, pertaining to the movement of vessels and commodities on the waters. The maritime industry includes maritime careers with are anything addressing ship construction and repair, ship registration, ports, ship brokerage, maritime law, shipping finance, to name but a few.
Social Distancing Measures: In the context of public health, social distancing is so-called as physical distancing. It is a series of non-pharmaceutical measures or interventions intended to minimize the spread of a contagious disease by keeping a physical distance between people and decreasing the frequencies of people come into close contact with each other. Indeed, social distancing aims to avoid gathering together in larger groups.
Shipping Market: The shipping market has been categorized into liner and tramp shipping start from the 1870s. Liner vessels carry general cargoes while tramp vessels carry bulk cargoes. Liner and tramp shipping are unique in operational characteristics, pricing characteristics, contractual characteristics, and market structures.
COVID-19 Pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic, also named as the coronavirus pandemic. It is created by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Due to the ineffective medical treatment and particular vaccine, the virus has spread quickly across the worldwide. In general, COVID-19 symptoms range from deadly to undetectable. However, most generally include fatigue, fever, and dry cough.
Lock Down Policy: A lockdown refers to a restriction policy for community or people to stay where they are. It is because particular risks to others or themselves in case they are able to interact and move freely.
Emergency Logistics Operations: Emergency logistics is the logistics activities caused by emergencies, including emergency logistics demand generated by emergencies and emergency logistics supply activities to meet these logistics needs, pursuing the purpose of maximizing time efficiency and minimizing disaster losses.
Crew Change Policy: Crew change policy is one of crew management. Crew change policy is crucial to avoid fatigue and improve seafarers’ safety, wellbeing, and health so as to make sure the safe operation of maritime trade.