The ITF exhorts the governments not to make of marine the lightning rod of the geopolitical tensions



The governments use the marine ones as puppets. The denunciation the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) emphasizing as such lowland consideration and understanding in confronts of the job carried out from the seafarers is put in evidence once more from the recent communication of the Department of State of the USA turned to the field of the shipping in which it perceives itself that us anti-terrorism will be done again to the legislation in order to deny the visa of the United States to those marine ones that work on board of a ship that transport oil Iranian, communication - it has remembered the international union of the workers of the transports - that the oil tanker Grace 1 is emitted after, now renamed Adrian Darya, has been released from the authorities of Gibraltar after to have received assurances that the ship would not have violated the endorsements of the EU in it confronts of Iran.

"As total trade-union federation - the president of the Section Marine of the ITF, Dave Heindel has commented - we are conscious that the geopolitical issues and the official endorsements fall back to out of our sphere of competence. However it is also to out of the competences of a marine one expecting that it or it can have a some infuence on the destination of a ship or its cargo. The marine ones, are they sailors or official - it has specified Heindel - very rarely they know where the ship is directed. Of norm it is a society of ship management to address a ship on a determined route and to transmit ulterior instructions successively. It is norm that if a ship is directed towards a port Iranian, solo the commander is the only one put to acquaintance of the destination one or two days before the arrival. The crew, and in particular the sailors and the officials of inferior degree, do not know it and they do not have some possibility to oppose themselves or to disembark during the travel".

"Moreover - it has still evidenced the representative of the ITF - usually the marine ones do not have idea of who he is effectively the owner of the ship on which they are working, and least of all who is the owner of the cargo. This - Heindel has remembered - is the reason for which the ITF from 1948 it has started a campaign against the system of the flags of convenience (FoC) that it dominates the field of the shipping and that allows with the owners of the ships, that they would have to be considered responsible, to hide behind a secrecy veil".

"It is not right - it has concluded the president of the Section Marine of the ITF - to flatly refuse the visas to marine that could be recruited on board of a ship that is considered violate of the endorsements, and not attribute the responsibilities to the people whom truly they have to them. The governments, included that of the United States, would have rather to turn own attentions to the FoC system and to change the rules that allow with this system and its relative norms of confidentiality to the property to prosper freely".