The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)welcomed the action by AMSA to ban the Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier ‘Shandong Hai Wang’ for 12 months, over deliberate crew underpayment, on 7 July.
On Friday, 6 July, AMSA received information from the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), alleging discrepancies in the payment of crew wages. As such, AMSA surveyors boarded the ship on arrival in Gladstone on 7 July to investigate the allegations.
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During the inspection, the surveyors found evidence that crew had been deliberately underpaid by about $56,000 (AUD) from the amount specified in their seafarer employment agreements and detained the vessel.
Commenting on this development, ITF seafarers’ section chair and joint chair of the ITF fair practices committee, Dave Heindel, mentioned:
This is the kind of enforcement that seafarers deserve from all authorities in all countries at all times. Only when unscrupulous ship owners know that there is nowhere to hide will we start to see an end to the gross exploitation of seafarers.
On the same wavelength, ITF dockers’ section chair and joint chair of the ITF fair practices committee, Paddy Crumlin, said congratulated the ITF inspectors for alerting the AMSA to this case.
He also congratulated the AMSA for “taking such swift and decisive action.”
We urge other port state authorities to follow this example and enforce the ILO maritime labour convention the same way. The ITF will continue to praise authorities who do a good job in protecting seafarers and shame those who do not.
Mr. Crumlin added.
On 12 July, AMSA was informed that all outstanding wages had been received by the crew. The ship has been released from detention this afternoon and issued with a direction notice banning its return to Australian ports for 12 months.
Several detentions and bans have been recorded in AMSA due to MLC deficiencies during last 5 years. A comparison of the 2015 and 2016 results indicated a slight improvement with respect to number of MLC deficiencies and deficiencies per inspection.
