Than Htike, a 38-year-old Burmese mechanic and Nyo Tun Lwin, a 30-year-old Burmese boatswain collecting a rope on the deck of the 'Sea Condor', abandoned in Puerto de Santa María since April.Marcos Moreno
The three Burmese sailors of the ship
Sea Condor
, the ship abandoned by its owner last April in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) will return to their country this Wednesday 29 after the intermediation of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) union and of the Spanish maritime authorities. The seafarers, who boarded the Mongolian-flagged offshore supply vessel in November 2020, have not received their salaries since the voyage began.
During these nine months, the ITF union has coordinated the sending of aid to the 54-meter-long boat, which has been carried out by the BayPort company from Cádiz, which selflessly collaborated by sending supplies on board.
The support, help and efforts of McPherson and the CádizPort Foundation have been decisive during all these months until they were able to vaccinate workers against coronavirus and coordinate their permits so that they can return by plane to Myanmar.
The captain and owner of the ship, who owes 89,000 euros in salaries to the sailors, abandoned the ship in the Bay of Cádiz in a boat on April 9.
The officer left with the chief engineer and both went to the Czech Republic, as confirmed last month to this newspaper by Kyaw Aye, the 45-year-old first officer, one of the three abandoned sailors.
“Following the usual protocols in cases of abandoned seafarers and ships, the ITF filed a demand for the freezing of the ship and will advance the money for the repatriation tickets so that the crew can return home with some hope of recovering the wages of more of a year of hardships and work on board ”, confirmed this Monday the union in a statement.
After all these months, in which the union has tried to contact the shipowner and the flag State (Mongolia) without success, the ship has been included in the abandonment list of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO- ILO).
“This is reminiscent of the worst cases of abandoned ships that we have had in ports of our geography on many occasions.
In addition to the atrocious damage that these situations pose to seafarers on board, violating their fundamental rights, the phenomenon of abandonment of ships harms the interests of the Port Authorities and poses a risk to their facilities.
The coronavirus crisis, the lack of rigorous inspections and controls due to it, the impunity enjoyed by some shipowners and the proliferation of some flags of convenience, has further increased the risk of seafarers being abandoned in our ports ”, they affirm from the ITF.