Shipping, India: I
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Sailors from India
Sailors abandoned by International employers/ 2024
Sushil Rao, April 14, 2024: The Times of India
The 21 Indian crew on MV Dali, which crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge late March, have been stuck on board for almost three weeks, but there are hundreds of other Indian sailors stranded on ships across the world whose stories haven’t been told.
It might surprise you that most abandoned sailors are Indians. A report by International Transport Federation (ITF), released in January, says 400 Indian crew were abandoned on ships last year. Some haven’t received salaries for months, others have been conned into joining ‘arrested’ ships that cannot leave the ports where they are berthed (a ship is arrested when it has unpaid dues at the port or has been caught in some illegal act). Right now, 12 Indian sailors are stuck on Fatma Eylul, an arrested ship berthed at Jetty Ambarli Port in Istanbul, Turkey. They were offered jobs on it last Dec. An agent received them, took them on board and vanished the next day. “To our horror, we were informed by security personnel that we couldn’t leave the port,” ship master Cleetus, who hails from Tamil Nadu, told TOI from Istanbul. “It is practically like being in prison. We are in a precarious situation. Our families are worried,” the ship’s crew said in a letter to India’s Director General of Shipping.
Some Are Stuck For Years
Human trafficking is a common issue in the shipping industry. Crew are often hired without contracts, or the contracts aren’t honoured. “It is a traumatic experience for seafarers,” said Capt Manoj Joy of Sailors Welfare Association, India.
Capt Ayyappan Swaminathan fought a bitter three-year battle with the management of MV Azraq Moiah, stranded at Ajman Port, UAE, whose 12 crew weren’t paid for months and denied essentials like food and drinking water at the height of the stand-off. The crew finally disembarked in June 2019.
The crew of oil tanker MT Tamim was also stranded on the vessel at Sharjah for nearly two years. The plight of chief engineer Gorrepotu Venkat Rao, able sea- man Kurma Rao Chintada – both from Andhra Pradesh – and chief officer Dhruva Chandra from Uttar Pradesh caught the attention of the Ministry of External Affairs, which rescued them. In yet another case, two Indian crew members of MV Tamim Aldar escaped in a lifeboat after being stranded for 34 months on the abandoned ship. Chief engineer Arso Lobo and crew member Vikas Mishra were rescued by the UAE coast guard in the Persian Gulf in August 2019.
How To Spot Shady Offers
Often, crew with some basic training are put on ships in a way that lets the ship management evade accountability, said Abhijeet Sangle, president of Mumbaibased All India Seafarers and General Workers Union. “There is no record of them anywhere,” he added. Sangle said proper checking of sailors’ documents before they are allowed to travel abroad can prevent trafficking: “This will ensure their safety, as it can be ascertained if a responsible organisation is offering them jobs,” he said.
Sangle has helped many Indian sailors who were abandoned at sea, including 23 in Nigeria, 11 in Cyprus, two in Indonesia and two in Kuwait. Abandoning sailors is a human rights abuse, said Kuwait-based activist Shaheen Sayyed, who hails from Mumbai: “They are left in helpless situations and even denied basic amenities.” She helped J Shankar Rao of Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, who was stranded on board the ship MT Apecus at Bonny Island in Nigeria, return home. He was alone on the ship as other crew had been taken captive by pirates.
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Shipping, India: I
