A humble attempt to keep sailors in touch with their homes
16 June 2015, Kolkata: The challenges of a seafaring life is endless but perhaps the most difficult one to deal with is the social isolation which he/she goes through while sailing. In most of the cases a seafarer feels lost once he/she signs-off and comes back home as many things in his/her surrounding changes during the months of sailing. For that reason, with an attempt to keep the sailors updated with the regular events back at their home country, Sailors Club has started a Free Daily National News Service at the ships. At the moment Sailors Club is sending Free Daily National News to more than 100 ships covering news from the countries including India, Philippines, China, Greece, Indonesia, Russia, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and Pakistan.
Beyond all the hypes of high salaries and long vacations the reality of a seafarer’s life is something needing much attention. While the Human Resource Departments of the big Multinational Organizations are searching for more ways in order to maintain the much desired work-life balance of their employees, the quality of the work-life of a seafarer continues to remain in troubled water. As a recent survey by Sailors Club (www.sailors-club.net) reveals that a majority of seafarers suffer from social isolation while on-board it is high time we find out ways to make the situation better by some reasonable extent.
The long and tiresome exposure to the sea often creates certain stagnancy which the seafarers try to break. But what are the ways? The supply of movies, books, magazines dries up after a while and the accessibility to the internet is still a fairy tale for most of the ships. Hence, the mails from the ship management companies are the only source of information and rather connection to the world outside the sea. But the mails from the ship management companies are mostly instructions and commands given with specific purposes. Though few managers provide daily national news to their ships but their number is very less compared to large number of vessels operating in the deep oceans.
On the other hand we also cannot actually fully blame the attitude of the Ship Management companies, as the tough competition has squeezed their resources and ever evolving Maritime conventions is making their survival increasingly difficult.
Then there are conventions like MLC 2006 which has only worsen the situation by increasing the paper works for on-board seafarers, instead of actually improving that, as been stated in the Preamble of the much hyped convention.
For that reason Sailors Club has taken the initiative to deliver Free National News to the Ships as aid to the Seafarers to break their monotonous days in the Seas. It should be recognized that a National news is not just a piece of information which fly away in the daily life of a land-lubber in the era of 24 hour News Channel and Social media on their Smartphones but rather it provides new avenues of discussions and debates among the crew mates to break the monotony of the Seafaring life.
By now Sailors Club sends Free National News to just over 100 ships covering news from the countries like India, Philippines, China, Greece, Indonesia, Russia, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and Pakistan for now and will add more on request. One can also register their ship’s email id by simply clicking this link and filling in the details:
https://www.sailors-club.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28671&Itemid=734
About Sailors Club:
Sailors Club is a social networking site dedicated exclusively to the maritime industry. Launched in the year 2013, Sailors Club already has the membership of over 18, 000 maritime professionals including seafarers, ship management companies, ship owners, chandlers, P&I officers, surveyors and maritime media.
“Jo”
