Union Complains of Unsafe Ships

Thousands of seafarers risk their lives on unsafe cargo vessels that daily enter the East African ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, trade union officials said last week. An estimated 85 percent of all vessels calling at the Kenyan and Tanzanian ports do not meet basic international safety regulations. "They are sub-standard in terms of accommodation, in terms of conditions in general and in terms of safety," Juma Khamis, regional chairman for Africa of the International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF), said on Tuesday. The majority of these sub-standard vessels sail under Flags of Convenience (FOCs), allowing the owners to skimp on safety regulations and putting crews in danger not just of sinking but of potentially life-threatening equipment on board. According to Lloyds shipping statistics, 90 percent of deaths at sea across the world are onboard FOC ships. Julius Mshilla was working on an FOC cargo ship sailing from Mombasa to Durban, South Africa, in May when the vessel began to experience engine difficulties in the Mozambique Channel and collided with another ship. "I was in the water for four hours with a dislocated shoulder," he said. "We lost three people, and to this day nothing has been done for us because we have no legal rights." In a bid to publicize the plight of exploited sailors around the world the ITF's campaign ship Mv Global Mariner, itself a former FOC vessel, was in Mombasa last week, to begin an 18-month world tour. A hard-hitting exhibition in the ship's hold showing the conditions on board FOC ships has already pulled in over 600,000 people. "Few people realize this kind of thing happens in this day and age," the ship's captain Dave Enever said. "You would have thought over the last 150 years conditions for workers internationally would have improved." "But in many respects working conditions have actually deteriorated," he said. "What we are seeing on these ships is cheap labor and morally it is totally indefensible." Kenyan seafarers demonstrating outside the ship claim they get paid between $150 and $200 a month. The ITF minimum wage recommendation is $1,200. Enever, a veteran campaigner who captained Greenpeace's flag ship Rainbow Warrior II during protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific in 1995, says he does not expect the ITF campaign to achieve immediate results. "What I would like to see is ships return to their national flags," he said.