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Seafarers no longer allowed to fly in to join ships at Lanka’s ports
View(s):Suspension just days after shipping agents thwart move by Avant Garde Maritime Services (AGMS) and Rakna Arakshaka Lanka Ltd (RALL) to monopolise transfer of seafarers between vessels, hotels ports and airports
The Government has temporarily blocked seafarers from coming in by commercial flight to join ships at any of Sri Lanka’s ports after several recent arrivals from India were found to be infected with COVID-19.
The suspension comes just days after shipping agents thwarted a move by Avant Garde Maritime Services (AGMS) and Rakna Arakshaka Lanka Ltd (RALL) to monopolise the lucrative business that involves the transfer of seafarers between vessels, hotels, ports and airports.
Seafarers are no longer allowed to fly in by air unless on a chartered flight that sees all passengers on board immediately joining their ship. Small groups flying commercial are not permitted. However, crew coming by sea at any Sri Lankan port may still disembark and leave the country by air.
Twenty-nine seafarers on an incoming flight from Mumbai tested positive for the virus. They were subjected to PCR tests 72 hours before departure and cleared. But results of tests carried out in Sri Lanka found them to be infected.
“It’s a bit strange that they were cleared in India but found to have contracted the illness upon landing here, just 72 hours later,” a shipping agent said.
The director of the Indian company that arranged the crew’s air passages was quoted in Indian media as saying, “Everything went well till Sri Lanka decided to give contract for COVID-19 to a private lab. First time they did the job and said 29 seafarers were COVID positive. All the crew did the test and had negative reports filed with Sri Lanka and then flew from Mumbai.”
Crew changes–where seafarers finishing their contract leave ships and fly out while new crews fly in and embark the vessel–only restarted here at the beginning of June. Since then, local shipping agents had actively promoted Sri Lanka as a safe destination, especially to the Indian market which was badly hit by the pandemic.
The agents had hoped to gain advantage from opening up before other countries did. Indian crews, in particular, had been languishing on vessels despite finishing their contracts.
In the meantime, the Ceylon Association of Shipping Agents (CASA) also fended off an attempt to grant sole control over parts of the business to a joint venture that had backing from the President’s office.
In May, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa gave permission for a public-private partnership between AGMS and RALL to run isolation centres during the pandemic. They were to also take over the transport of ships’ crews between various destinations.
But CASA protested, saying the business must be shared among industry players and not monopolised. This led to the earlier status quo being restored under strict guidelines. AGMS, too, is free to carry out the business if it so wishes.