Ten Jamaican crew on the MSC-owned liner MSC Seaview (currently anchored in Santos (Sao Paulo, Brazil) are growing frustrated with being at sea and are appealing to the Government of Jamaica to repatriate them in short order.
The pandemic threw global travel into lockdown in March, leaving a number of cruise liners in a quandary, seeking cruise ports to repatriate passengers and crew to their homes.
Jamaica had closed its borders to passenger traffic, with thousands of stranded Jamaican crew members around the world expressing displeasure at the refusal of the Government to coordinate initiatives to get them home or grant them landing privileges.
Up to June 22, a total of 1957 cruise ship crew were repatriated under a controlled program. According to the Government, at least 45 have tested Coronavirus-positive.
In May, after 1044 seafarers had been granted landing privileges at historic Falmouth in Trelawny, Foreign Affairs Minister Kamina Johnson Smith said that the government was "working on scheduling the repatriation of the remaining seafarers out there, and again, this is across nine ship lines, and I would say easily, more than 115 ships, some of which are being consolidated even as we speak”.