With each passing day relatives of the sailors stuck in their ships on Chinese waters are growing more anxious. Most of the stranded seafarers were supposed to be back with their families early last year. But a whole year has passed, during which the pandemic broke out and first vaccines to fight it were also administered, and these sailors have yet to return home.
Jimmy Tandel s father was supposed to be with his family in April last year. Gajanand Tandel started work on the ship Anastasia in July 2019 as an able seaman. But it has been 18 months now on the ship and we still don t know when he will be back, says Jimmy. She says that with the few conversations that she has with her father when the sailors on the ship get access to the internet, she can tell that the crew is physically and mentally exhausted.
Onboard the merchant ship the Anastasia, four crew members are on suicide watch.
âThey need to go home immediately or something worse will occur,â says Gaurav Singh, 29, second officer of the ship that has been stranded at anchor for nearly five months off the Caofeidian port on the Chinese coastline.
An estimated 1500 seafarers are stranded in Chinese harbours âessentially as pawns of warâ, according to Dean Summers from Maritime Union of Australia.
There are fears for the mental health of the stranded crew, pictured on the Anastasia this week.
The crews are held hostage to import restrictions imposed on Australian coal as part of a wider geopolitical feud between the two nations. Companies keen to offload thermal coal to their Chinese buyers have kept the ships at anchor hoping for a resolution, but that option disappeared when China formally banned Australian coal imports on Tuesday, throwing the $14 billion export industry into turmoil.