Scores of once stranded Barbadians are now back home thanks to Government’s decision to allow some cruise ships to use the Bridgetown Port for repatriation.
Chairman of the Barbados Port Inc Senator Lisa Cummins told Barbados TODAY that in exchange for allowing those ships to dock on the island, the chartered planes coming to take the crew home were also bringing Barbadians home.
Harmony of the Seas, the world’s longest cruise ship and the second largest, became the latest vessel to dock at the Port when it arrived today carrying over 4000 crew members.
“What is an important part and is not necessarily known is that we would have heard about some Barbadians, including Barbadian crew members and Barbadians who were stranded abroad being able to come home.
“These ships are the reason that these Barbadians are able to come home because the cruise lines are flying the planes in. They are going to be flying them in empty and say they are Barbadians in the UK or wherever, these Barbadians have an opportunity to work with our overseas embassies and they are able to get home and then they go into quarantine here in Barbados because they are staying on the island,” Cummins said.
“Because these ships are repatriating through Barbados, the planes that are taking them home are also bringing our Barbadians home.”
The chairman disclosed that Barbados had been facilitating crew repatriation since March 23.
Cummins said more than 25 ships had already benefited from the initiative.
Speaking in relation to Harmony of the Seas, Cummins said some of the crew had been on the water for close to two months.
She said those crew members would be transported to the Grantley Adams International Airport where chartered flights were waiting to take them home.
“But why is the second largest cruise ship in the world in Barbados at this point? Because the cruise lines have had a number of challenges with various ports around the world not allowing the ships to disembark and to allow for the chartered planes to come in even though there are protocols in place, or you have crew members that are all healthy,” Cummins said.
“In the case of this particular vessel these are crew members who have been at sea, in some instances, over 60 days and quarantine periods as we know are 14 days.
“These people have been stranded at sea for close to two months and so they just want to get home. So what Royal Caribbean has done is they have consolidated their crew members across multiple ships, placed them on single ships and sailed them to different ports, “Barbados is not the only one but we are the one in this area. There are chartered flights that are flying in and the crew members are going directly from the seaport to the airport to board those chartered flights and fly out to their home countries to their families,” she added.
Cummins emphasized that those crew members would not be quarantined in Barbados as they were not staying here.
She said they would all be moved over the “next couple of days”.
“There is no local stay here in Barbados at all and they are all not moving at the same time. They are moving over the course of a couple of days at a time, so for this particular vessel and the other vessels that are berthed here, there are maybe like 25 chartered planes that are being flown in and out of Barbados to take them to the various locations,” Cummins reiterated.
She said planes would be leaving the GAIA destined for the Phillipines, Indonesia, Ukraine, South America, Canada and Europe.
The chairman maintained that everything had been done under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Health.
Cummins said last weekend over 700 crew members were flown out.
randybennett@barbadostoday.bb
