Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day nationwide lockdown on March 24 to check the spread of coronavirus, giving less than four hours notice before the order took effect.
Since the lockdown included cancellation of all international flights, the crew members could not fly home.
“Majority of the cruise lines are ready to charter the Indian crew to India, but the Indian government is not giving them permission to fly due to the lockdown,” Dixon Vaz, founder of the Goan Seamen Association of India, who has been working closely with the stranded crew members, told.
“But no beds were available at the time,” she said.
Fear of virus outbreak on ships
Fear of being infected by the coronavirus haunts most crew members who have been kept in isolation.
Rahul Shanbagh, 24, from Goa’s Margoa city, is a crew member on the MSC Grandiosa cruise ship. He has been stranded on the ship since mid-March.
The ship has 350 crew members on board, including nearly 200 Indians, and is currently docked in Civitavecchia in Italy.
“There were at least 14 cases [of coronavirus] reported on this ship, of which four were Indians. Currently, we [Indians] are the only ones left here. Everyone from all other countries has been evacuated.”
Angie Fernando* is among the 242 Indian crew members on the Costa Diadema cruise ship docked in Italy’s Port Piombino since the middle of March.
His sister, who did not want to reveal her name, told she has been calling officials in New Delhi and the Indian embassy in Rome almost every day.
The cruise ship has reported 329 coronavirus cases so far.
“We are extremely worried about Angie. He sounds hopeless and depressed about the situation there. There are times when we just get monosyllabic replies from him,” she said.
A statement released by Costa Diadema on April 10 on the status of its Indian crew said: “To date, several attempts made with different solutions have not had a positive outcome with the Indian authorities.”
Another seafarer, who did not want to reveal his name, said he was stranded on a cruise ship named Norwegian Sky, currently docked in the Bahamas.
“We are mentally stressed, frightened and lonely. My room is very small with no window,” he told. “We just want to get home and stay close to our family.”
‘Still a work in progress’
On April 5, India’s Shipping Minister Mansukh Lal Manadaviya assured the safe passage of the crew members back home following a meeting with the representatives of MASSA.
AP reached out to both Manadaviya and MASSA’s Captain Shiv Halbe, but received no response.
Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the extension of a “no sail order” on April 9 for nearly 100 cruise ships in the country’s waters.
Following the CDC order, Dixon Vaz wrote a letter to the Indian prime minister, urging the government to “keep the Indian seafarers stranded in mind, and to allow a window period after April 14 when the initial lockdown period gets over, and evacuate the seafarers”.
On April 10, Dammu Ravi, an official with India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said the return of Indians stranded abroad is “still a work in progress”.
“No update on it right now. We are working on it, and our envoys are in touch with them,” he said, according to a report by the NDTV news channel.
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