U.S. blockade hinders the hiring of Cuban sailors

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 16 (ACN) The Cuban company Selecmar, of the Ministry of Transport, lost over 11.6 million US dollars from March 2019 to December 2020, due to the U.S. blockade imposed against Cuba.

This was revealed at a press conference by Rafael Peraza Santiago, general director of that entity created in 1995 and dedicated to the management of seafarers (seafarer-crew member) who provide services on ships owned by foreign shipowners or shipping companies.

He stressed that the last few years have been hard for the company's activity due to the worsening of the US government's policy; without going any further, they currently have 1,100 Cuban seafarers enrolled, a figure that is far from the 1,700 they had in 2017 with the rapprochement between Havana and Washington.

According to Peraza Santiago, the process of inserting them in international shipping companies is complex, because they are required visas, while those of other nationalities are approved by mechanisms in an expeditious manner, and in correspondence with the dynamism of the activity.
Ship captain René Calero explained that due to these difficulties they lose their jobs, "any other seafarer in the world does not have to wait 15 or 20 days for a visa and the shipowners are not willing to do so either".

Likewise, the blockade hinders and delays the payment of their salaries due to the reduced options to make bank transfers because of the financial persecution created against the Cuban banking system.

The director of Selecmar said that the hostile policy prevents the introduction of crew members in the world's main cruise lines that ply the Caribbean, and that in their voyage touch U.S. and Puerto Rican ports.

In this regard, Antonio Pérez Morales, a captain with 27 years of experience, told the Cuban News Agency that a shipping company operating in the region, where he was enrolled with five other Cubans, was fined by U.S. immigration authorities upon arriving at one of its ports, because it had crew members from the island.

The shipowner had to pay 1,500 dollars per day for each one of us, a fact that generated that in the end he complied with the minimum work contract established and then dispensed with our services, he said