The (ITF) International Transport Workers Federation and its affiliated unions in Cameroon and the Central African Republic (CAR) today hand-delivered letters to the heads of state of those countries asking them to act to protect truck drivers whose lives are at risk.

The ITF Seafarers' Trust - which often pays for vehicles for seafarers' welfare bodies and missions - has announced it will be surveying their uses and effectiveness so as to use its grants as effectively as possible. The Trust will be partnering in the programme with the International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA) and the North American Maritime Ministry Association (NAMMA).

Seafarers’ Rights International (SRI) and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) are backing a new book on the plight of fishers that is due for publication tomorrow, Thursday 30 July.

A bitter, month-long dispute at Air Madagascar that grounded most of the carrier’s fleet for weeks finally ended on 17 July, following successful negotiations between the carrier and the ITF-affiliated Syndicat General Maritime de Madagascar (SYGMMA).

Tomorrow’s FC Barcelona presidential elections are likely to seal the fate of any further sponsorship deal by Qatar Airways (QR), according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). The ITF says that the gulf between the airline’s treatment of staff and the club’s strong social ethos is now so huge that it will figure in the choice of president by its 70,000 members, who will go on to vote in October on any further sponsorship.

A union training facility in Washington is the setting for the ITF young transport workers’ summer school this week.

The ITF has released a new video documenting the success of recent mentoring meetings when officials from Uganda’s Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union (ATGWU) visited two unions in Kenya to discuss the challenges of organising workers in the informal sector.

Discussion documents on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) published by Wikileaks reveal a continuing threat to seafarers’ wages and conditions should the agreement be adopted, the (International Transport Workers’ Federation) said today.

Commenting on the election of Lim Ki-Tack as the next president of the IMO (International Maritime Organization), Paddy Crumlin, president of the ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation), said:

Seafarers’ Rights International (SRI) and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) are marking the Day of the Seafarer by launching a series of short films to help seafarers understand their rights under the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 (MLC).

The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and Seafarers’ Rights International (SRI) report progress being made on the urgent issue of the criminalisation of seafarers. This follows the positive reception from the IMO’s (International Maritime Organization) Legal Committee to a paper co-sponsored by the ITF, the International Federation of Shipmasters' Associations (IFSMA), the Comité Maritime International (CMI) and InterManager.

The ITF-affiliated Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU) in Uganda succeeded in completing its elections on 10 June without police disruption or presence after a public pledge by the inspector general of police on Sunday that he would not allow the force to operate outside the law.