Mozambique: Crew stuck for months on ship in Maputo port ask for help to go home

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Mozambique: Crew stuck for months on ship in Maputo port ask for help to go home

10:03 CAT | 25 Jan 2024

Photo: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa

After months moored in the port of Maputo, without going out to sea, the last five crew members of the “Volopas”, Russians, Ukrainians and a Lithuanian, have got fed up and put a sign on the hull of the fishing vessel asking to return home.

The situation was observed by Lusa during a visit to the port of Maputo, visible outside the ship, flying the Cameroonian flag, where the crew complained of not having passports or of not being “sent home”.

“Please spread our appeal,” the poster reads.

Lusa also found that the five crew members spent part of the morning at the port’s migration services, but refused to make any statement and returned to the ship, where they have been living in precarious conditions for months. The sailors referred any statement to the Russian Embassy in Maputo, which has yet to respond to Lusa’s request.

In a request for legal assistance that the Mozambican public institute INTRANSMAR, the maritime transport regulatory authority, sent to the Maputo Maritime Court on January 9, the precarious conditions of the scientific research vessel, which has accumulated debts of more than US$400,000 in eight months in the port of the Mozambican capital, and its crew, are acknowledged.

READ: Two Russian sailors held in Mozambique as financial hostages, Moscow says

Volopaslnh.lusa_

In the document, to which Lusa has had access, ITRANSMAR “recognizes the precarious conditions in which the crew live on board” and asks “that mechanisms be initiated to improve living conditions on board”, namely their disembarkation, but bearing in mind that “the legal provisions” must be respected, namely the minimum crew to operate the ship, which is what is currently happening.

In a note from the Russian ministry of foreign affairs, published on Sunday by the state news agency RIA Novosti, it is stated that there are five people on the 53-meter-long fishing vessel “Volopas”, already without fuel or electricity, that two of them, including the captain, are Russian, and reporting that the crew only has food once a day.

It is added that the Russian crew conveyed their desire to return to their country and that the Russian Embassy in Mozambique “immediately turned to the local authorities for assistance”.

In the document sent to the court, ITRANSMAR confirms Russia’s request for assistance in disembarking the two Russian crew members, claiming that the ship’s agent refused to hand over the disembarkation letter to the migration services for the purpose of issuing crew visas.

It adds that on December 6, an ITRANSMAR team visited the ship and the crew, together with a representative of the agent, the Portmar company, and found that the five had been without wages for two months, “that the fuel was about to run out and that they only turned on the electric generator for one hour a day so that they could cook”.

“The crew had no water to drink, only water to bathe in, and the food they bought with their own money was only enough for one meal a day. And in terms of work, the crew said that the ship had last gone fishing in April 2021,” reads the document.

READ: Mozambique blames Volopas vessel owner for crew’s precarious situation in Maputo

On the same occasion, the ship’s agent explained that the shipowner belongs to Iceberg Seafood Lda FZC, which formed a partnership with Miroslav Oufmtsev, resulting in Bantu Fishing, Lda, which is 60% owned by TEBERG and 40% by that businessman.

The agent added that the ship arrived in the country under a memorandum of understanding between Mozambique’s Oceanographic Institute and Bantu Fishing, to “carry out deep-sea crustacean research”, but “there was a disagreement between the partners”, who stopped paying the ship’s expenses, namely the agent, port, crew and migration, “which resulted in the ship owing these entities” more than US$430,000 (€394,700).

The agent alone claims a debt of US$30,000 (€27,500), but rejects this as the reason for not disembarking the crew: “If the crew, who know the ship, disembarked, it would be abandoned in port, putting the safety of the ship and the port at risk.”

The ITRANSMAR investigation reported to the court also concluded that Bantu Fishing “failed to comply” with the memorandum, which expires on February 23, and was supposed to provide three boats, which it did not. It also confirmed that the vessel’s seaworthiness and radio certificates have been “expired” since May, and that the Scientific Research fishing license expired on December 31st.

Source: Lusa