Three cruiseliners to bring home 1,200 Goan seafarers this month

Lisa Monteiro | TNN | May 2, 2020, 04:51 IST

Panaji: Three more cruiseliners carrying over 3,500 Indians, including around 1200 Goans, are scheduled to disembark their crew at Mumbai and Goa ports in the coming weeks.
Two of these cruiseliners — the Royal Carribean’s Ovation of the Seas and Carnivals’ Europa 2 — looking at disembarking their Goan crew at MPT, have already contacted the chairman, director of NRI affairs Anthony D’Souza told TOI.
The ship handlers of these two cruiseliners will also disembark crew at Kochi and Mumbai ports. Due to the peculiar SOP of the government of India, the only option at this point is for them to take the sea route and sign off their crew in India.
“The Royal Caribbean Cruises have been coming to Goa port over the years for tourism and would usually sign off their crew in another part of the world and arrange for paid flights to India. Now they’re on a different mission,” D’Souza said.
Norwegian cruiseliner Seven Seas Voyager is expected to arrive at Mumbai port on May 10.
“They want to disembark all the 160 Indian crew members at Mumbai. It has left Abu Dhabi and is already on the way but it is slow steaming as it wants to complete the 14 day-quarantine period at sea,” D’Souza said. This cruiseliner wants to follow the path that Marella Discovery took and send the Goan crew back home by road.
The Ovation of the Seas coming in from South East Asia is expected to arrive in India on May 17 when it will disembark almost 1,000 crew members at Kochi port, 400 at MPT and 500 at Mumbai.
Likewise, Europa 2 is expected in India by the end of May when it will disembark 500 crew members in Mumbai, 800 in Goa and almost 200 in Kochi.
A large chunk of the 10,000-odd persons’ data the commission has received comprises seafarers who cannot sign off on Indian shores; the central government’s SOP for sign off doesn’t apply to them. .
As their companies are ready to arrange charters to ferry them back home, they await the opening of airports.
Commissioner for NRI affairs Narendra Sawaikar told TOI that the commission continues to compile data of Indians stranded abroad and will share this data with the central government once it indicates the way forward. “Once the central government releases an advisory and mechanism for air travel, all states will have to work accordingly. The decision ultimately lies with the central government,” he told TOI.