Up to a thousand ships flagged to the Cook Islands, Palau,
Sierra Leone, and Togo will be targeted for safety, maintenance and
seafarer welfare inspections across the Mediterranean Sea in the coming eight
weeks by an army of inspectors from the International Transport Workers’
Federation (ITF), seafarers’ unions and port authorities.
“Substandard shipping in the
Mediterranean Sea is driving down seafarers’ wages and conditions, its
endangering the lives of crew and risking our environment,” said ITF
Inspectorate Coordinator Steve
Trowsdale.
“These flags take money from shipowners to register ships that other
countries wouldn’t touch. Many are old vessels and are poorly-maintained by
their owners. Many of these ships are dangerous and should not be trading,” he
said.
The blitz comes off the back of new analysis showing the four Flags of
Convenience registries together accounted for more than 100 crew abandoned in
the last two years, with millions of dollars wages not paid to crew by the
flags’ shipowners that the ITF then had to recover on seafarers’ behalf.
Trowsdale said often when the ITF or its affiliated unions called on the
flags to fix problems caused by irresponsible shipowners, such as in cases
of abandonment – “that’s when
these flags are nowhere to be seen – they take the money and run.”
In just three years, the Cook Islands, Palau, Sierra Leone, and Togo
flags were responsible for:
·
33 cases of crew
abandonment, affecting more than a hundred seafarers, leaving many without pay,
food, water, or a way to get home.[1]
·
Over $5,500,000 USD in unpaid
wages cheated from crew, that the ITF then had to recover from
the flags’ shipowners on seafarers’ behalf.[2]
·
5,203 deficiencies or detentions issued by European Port
State Control enforcement agencies.[3]
The ITF inspectors’ efforts will be bolstered in France by the country’s
Port State Control agencies, which are organised regionally, Trowsdale said.
They will be also targeting the four flags. A decision which makes sense
given both the Paris and Tokyo MOUs have banned or cautioned against ships
bearing the flags from being admitted to the ports of most countries in Europe
and Asia-Pacific, respectively.
“These are now the worst flags operating in the Mediterranean Sea,”
said SeddikBerrama, General Secretary of Algeria’s transport union
FNTT and ITF Vice President for the Arab World region.