00:00A marine engineer missing since his ship was attacked off Oman on Sunday has now been confirmed dead.
00:07Hiram Kamarka is the second Indian seafarer to be killed in the Strait of Hormuz in the past three days.
00:14Crews are facing perilous voyages through the straits, all being stranded due to the resumption in the fighting.
00:21Stephen Cosson is the General Secretary of the International Transport Workers Federation.
00:26Stephen, we're preoccupied with the military story of both sides.
00:30What of ordinary mariners?
00:32What do crews face when they're stranded aboard ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz?
00:39Well, the recent developments have enhanced the problem for seafarers.
00:43Obviously, we've been sitting in a state of confusion since the conflict started.
00:48Then when the MOU was signed, we were optimistic in partnership with the employers and the International Maritime Organization would
00:57find a way to get the seafarers out of the zone.
01:00What we've seen over the last week is the genuine targeting of maritime ships.
01:06And we need to say that seafarers are civilian workers and it's totally unacceptable that they're being used as pawns
01:14in this process.
01:14For them and their emotions, it's been a real roller coaster.
01:19We're hearing more and more requests to be repatriated.
01:23And then, of course, the difficulty is if you repatriate seafarers, you need to get other seafarers to volunteer to
01:29fly to the Gulf and then join the ships.
01:32And what we're seeing at the moment, there's some serious concerns on the behalf of seafarers.
01:37I mean, that's surely going to be very difficult to persuade people to get on commercial vessels and sail into
01:44this now that the hostilities have restarted.
01:48Well, as you can imagine, the majority of the seafarers come from the Philippines or Indians or global south.
01:55So the challenge isn't just instantaneous.
01:58It takes some time to process, to fly them out.
02:02The feedback we're getting is seafarers are gravely concerned.
02:05We've also been working with the Indian and the Philippine government, who, of course, are extremely concerned about the well
02:12-bearing of their citizens.
02:13So at the moment, it's a bit of a catastrophe for the shipping industry and our seafarers.
02:18Can you give us an idea of conditions these people are facing on board ship?
02:24I mean, particularly when they can't go anywhere in terms of food supplies, clean water, medical supplies.
02:31How are they coping? What sort of conditions are they living in?
02:34Well, the ships, as you could imagine, are on anchor.
02:38So that means they're not next to the port, which means we've been collaborating with the ship owners that we
02:44deal with and the Gulf states to make sure that there is ready supplies of clean water and food.
02:51But the situation over the last few months has been one of great monotony, supplemented when the warfare is taking
02:58over, that you're involved in a sort of a crossfire, both with the missiles coming in and also the defense
03:06mechanisms, which can knock them down and then potentially hit ships that are heavily laden with oil, civil aviation fuel,
03:15other challenges.
03:15So the stress is quite hard. The monotony of not really going anywhere, that's one of the strong feedbacks we've
03:22had from crew that, you know, normally in the three month cycle, four month cycle, they would have been from
03:29one port to another.
03:30They've literally been maneuvering ships to face weather waves and those challenges.
03:35So it's a monotonous situation full of stress.
03:38Stephen, thank you. Stephen Cotton, General Secretary of the International Transport Workers Federation.
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