14 MONTHS COUNTING : Seven Seafarers Left To Rot Along Abandoned Vessel Navimar 3,
The case of a crew member stranded for 14 months, with no pay and no way to get home, highlights the dark side of the global maritime industry, the International Transport Workers Federation ITF has disclosed.
Locals assisting with the abandoned Navimar 3 barge after a mooring rope became entangled in its propellers.
An engineer working for Navimar 3, a tugboat anchored off Bangladesh, is one of several hundred seafarers who have been abandoned this year.
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Thirty three nautical miles south of Chittagong in Bangladesh, a tugboat called the Navimar 3 is anchored off Kutubdia Island, as it has been since March last year.
A crew of seven seafarers, including an Indian engineer officer who has been there throughout, maintain the vessel. The engineer has no means of getting home, nor a visa to disembark.
His passport and certification documents are being withheld by the local agent in Bangladesh for Middle East Marine (MEM), a shipping company based in Dubai. For the past 14 months he has not been paid any wages by the company.
“Such “seafarer abandonment” is a recurring scandal in the shadows of the maritime industry. Figures from the International Transport Workers’ Federation identify 250 to 300 cases,”ITF lamented