Raising seafarers’ plight to the world

Raising seafarers’ plight to the world
Yashika F. Torib May 5, 2021 https://www.manilatimes.net/2021/05/05/business/maritime-business/raisin...

In a time when tens of thousands of individuals stepped forward to hold the line of safety and survival in the face of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, one sector of essential workers seemed to have been forgotten by the world — the seafarers

This injustice to the silent and seemingly perpetually invisible merchant mariners moved Maria Dixon, the Spanish Managing Director of UK-based ISM Shipping Solutions, to actively campaign for their rights and welfare that has been blatantly ignored by so many countries around the world.

“The crew change crisis since last year filled me with indignation, I felt the world was ignoring the seafarers’ contribution and sacrifices,” Dixon said in an interview.

“For the grand majority they were, and still are, invisible. Some shipowners and ship managers do not care. The worse are the heads of states — more than 70 countries have not declared seafarers as key workers. This bureaucracy prevents them from going to their ships or returning to their homeland.

A whole long list wrong doings due to the lack of inter-governmental communications have caused all these; are they aware that the constant flow of hard currency entering their countries are from the hard work of seafarers?”

The persisting disregard over the welfare of seafarers prompted Dixon to launch the “NO Seafarers = NO Shipping = NO Shopping” campaign on the Internet. The move has immediately caught the attention of the global netizens, thus, raising awareness of the crisis and prompting governments to act.

“I needed to tell the world the hell that our seafarers are enduring,” she said.

Dixon’s passion for the welfare of mariners started when, as a registrar for the Consulate of Panama in London, she learned of their stories first hand.

“The most horrendous reports are found on the ship’s logbooks. Seafarers get ill, encounter an accident, fall overboard, and suffer through piracy attacks. Then there was the entire crew of a bulk carrier that I just registered around Christmas of 1992, whom we have all lost. It was very upsetting and horrible, my heart breaks in pieces reading or hearing about this.”

Since then, Dixon organized a debate in London as to whether ships should have their armed guards to protect them from pirates. Two weeks later, the United Nations and the International Maritime Organization allowed private security firms to board and protect vessels.

She also brought a seafarer to London to share his experience during his 18-months of captivity and torture at the hands of the pirates. This opened the eyes of the world to the struggles and dangers a seafarer goes through.

Dixon is a member of the Titanic Foundation in Spain and represents Spain in the “Philippe Cousteau Union of the Oceans” Association in the UK. “We intend to teach school children about shipping in Spain. I may also be able to do something similar here in the UK,” she said.

Having been raised by a father who thinks highly of seafarers and marrying a son of World War II Royal Navy veterans, Dixon admitted that her admiration and appreciation to mariners is such.

“When it’s time for me to go, I’d like my ashes to be scattered on the Panama Canal so I could be near the country I love and the ships that have allowed me to have such an interesting and wonderful life,” she concluded.