Thirteen Filipino seafarers have made it home after more than five months aboard an abandoned livestock carrier ship, the Yangtze Harmony, thanks to the intervention of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).
The ship’s owners abandoned the vessel and its crew after the ship was arrested in October 2022 in Singapore over an unpaid fuel bill. That is when the shipowner also stopped paying the entire crew, leaving them without wages or a way to get home.
The ITF said the Harmony’s Hong Kong-based shipowner had a long history of abandoning crew, and its vessels have been detained before for violating safety and crew welfare rules.
But what the ITF’s inspectors didn’t expect, however, was that the shipping company would abandon another crew in addition to the Harmony at the same time.
Between the Yangtze Harmony (IMO 9318917) and the Yangtze Fortune (IMO 9336282), the ITF’s months of advocacy would recover USD $1 million in backpay owed to the crew, as well as flights home and the feeling of freedom for every one of the 43 thankful seafarers.
Over the course of nearly six months, ITF coordinator Sandra Bernal worked to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and return travel for the 13 crew of the Harmony. "The seafarers on board the Yangtze Harmony were suffering from fatigue, anxiety and stress, of that there is no doubt," she said. "We should never make crew have to pay the price of their employer’s negligence – in money, time, or mental wellbeing. That would be blaming the victim."
ITF welcomed the resolution of the Harmony's case, but also pointed to marked differences in the way that Australian and Singaporean authorities treated similar problems. Two abandoned ships experienced different outcomes, though they belonged to the same shipowner. ITF asserted that Australian officials put a premium on crew welfare and communications, and moved the case along to resolution at a faster pace.
“We’ve secured for these seafarers more than a million dollars in owed wages – money that I very much doubt crew would have reached their pockets, if not for the relentless advocacy of my colleagues," said ITF Australia national coordinator Ian Bray. "But I can’t help noting that the process took more than two months longer in Singapore than it did in Australia. Adhering to the rights of seafarers shouldn’t be a lottery for crew.
