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As the ITF Seafarers’ Trust celebrates 25 years of assisting seafarers in 2006, Tom Holmer appeals to the wider maritime industry to do more to support vital welfare work in this often forgotten sector

The Seafarers’ Trust was set up in 1981 as a UK-registered charity dedicated to the support of seafarers’ spiritual, moral and physical wellbeing, regardless of their nationality or religion. Since then it has awarded grants of over £120 million to projects that benefit seafarers all over the world.

Until recently the largest proportion of grants was spent on buildings and vehicles, in response to applications for funding. But over the last five years the trust has taken a more proactive approach to grant allocation, with the result that spending has increased on more wide-ranging projects. These should have the capacity to improve the lives of a large number of working seafarers and their families, because of their global reach.

Two recent examples are the International Seafarers’ Assistance Network (ISAN, a freephone assistance service for seafarers and their families), and the Seafarers’ Health Information Programme (focusing on occupational health issues specific to seafarers) which started in 2004. We are also continuing to support the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden and the Seafarers International Research Centre in Cardiff.

Since the mid to late 1990s, our increased commitment to targeting areas of particular need, where seafarers’ welfare facilities may be non-existent or underdeveloped, has led us to allocate most of our funding to projects in the developing world. Recent projects have been financed in Africa, Central and Latin America, Indonesia, Russia and the former CIS countries. The ports concerned are usually in places where the local community is too poor to be able to build a structure for seafarers’ welfare work without external support.

Face-to-face support

While the trust can provide funds, target resources on training and finance the setting up of a welfare structure, we are always aware that face-to-face work with seafarers goes on through the efforts and dedication of a relatively small group of people. The overwhelming majority of them are from denominations of the Christian Church, who want to reach out to seafarers and offer support as they and their families face a life with many difficulties.

These people provide human contact between those on shore and those on ship, often overcoming the new challenges of security measures and rigid time constraints. For seafarers, these people can make a vital difference: unlike most people in the port they are not there for any commercial reason but as friends. Still relatively few seafarers come into contact with welfare workers however. A lot of work needs to be done to get a better coverage of services, and to ensure that the services offered are what seafarers most need and will use.

The financial sustainability of work with seafarers is a great concern for all the agencies dealing with seafarers’ welfare. The aim is to get a structure for welfare facilities and activities that is both widely recognised by the port community and widely supported.

The International Committee for Seafarers’ Welfare is doing great work in bringing together people from all sides of the shipping community, in order to get the financing of this work onto a more secure basis, under the ILO convention 163 on seafarers’ welfare.

It is an uphill struggle to bring seafarers’ welfare to the notice of the people running ports, but facilities like telephones and email should be seen as essential services for port users, particularly now that the ISPS code has imposed major limitations on shore leave.

Hard times

Most people agree that life is getting progressively harder for seafarers, who often have little money to spend on the port facilities that exist. Centres that have served seafarers for years are now having to look at sources of income other than those from the seafaring clients themselves. Centres close not necessarily because of lack of need but because of lack of finance.

The challenge today is to maintain the existing structure of welfare services while at the same time extending them into new ports and new areas of service and ministry. Yet even as we assist with providing services in one place, we hear of them being withdrawn elsewhere. Our aim is to get as many partners involved as possible in this work.

It seems to us that everyone in the maritime industry should recognise the good work that is being done and should support it, whether they are governments, port authorities, agency companies or ship owners. One of the aims of the trust and the ICSW is to bring welfare providers together in associations that have a role in the support and coordination of efforts to assist seafarers.

It is a continuing frustration that we can only fund a small proportion of the many good applications for sorely needed funds. However there is a lot of very good work being done, port by port, by men and women from the church, from unions and with other motivations, who work selflessly with this marginalised and largely forgotten group of skilled people. The trust looks forward to working with them for many years to come.

Tom Holmer is administrative officer of the ITF Seafarers’ Trust.