Cash bounty for missing crew members could attract criminals

The Mar­itime Union says cash boun­ties being offered for miss­ing over­seas fish­ing crew mem­bers is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous and is of dubi­ous legal­i­ty.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says he is con­cerned about a new trend that has pri­vate oper­a­tors fronting up big mon­ey to track down miss­ing crew mem­bers.

An adver­tise­ment placed in the Ota­go Dai­ly Times today offers an $1000 boun­ty for infor­ma­tion about miss­ing crew mem­ber Kismo Pak­istan who left his ves­sel the FV Oyang 70 in Dunedin on 5 June 2007.

The con­tact list­ed in the adver­tise­ment was Fish­eries Con­sul­tan­cy Lim­it­ed of Lyt­tel­ton and the adver­tise­ment was autho­rized by South­ern Storm Fish­ing (2007) Lim­it­ed of Christchurch.

Mr Han­son says hav­ing a cash boun­ty would encour­age crim­i­nal and unsavoury ele­ments to get involved, endan­ger­ing both the miss­ing fish­er­man and any­one who hap­pens to look like him.

“The poten­tial for stan­dover tac­tics, exploita­tion and abuse is sub­stan­tial.”

He says that if indi­vid­u­als have left ships and are in breach of their work visa, then it was the job of Gov­ern­ment author­i­ties to locate the miss­ing indi­vid­u­als.

“It is not the job of fish­ing com­pa­nies to act as the Sher­iff, Judge, Jury and Exe­cu­tion­er – we are not in the Wild West.”

He says shipjump­ing crew are not bad peo­ple.

“There are many rea­sons that for­eign fish­er­men jump ship, in some cas­es it is because they want a bet­ter life, they may be break­ing the law but they must be treat­ed as human beings and we should remem­ber that many peo­ple who came to New Zealand were doing exact­ly the same thing.”

He says the sad thing is the amount of mon­ey that is being offered for a reward would seem like a for­tune for young, impov­er­ished fish­ing crews from the Third World.

Mr Han­son says that there is a wide­ly acknowl­edged inter­na­tion­al prob­lem with fish­ing crews being mis­treat­ed and under­paid.

“We don’t want any of these prac­tices to become estab­lished in New Zealand waters, and we know that in the past there have been a num­ber of inci­dents that have led to Gov­ern­ment action.”

“We thought that moves by the Gov­ern­ment to tight­en up on bad prac­tices in the indus­try last year would have pulled a few horns in, but it seems that cer­tain play­ers want to con­tin­ue to push the bound­aries.”

Mr Han­son says the Mar­itime Union says that fish­ing com­pa­nies in New Zealand waters should be made to employ New Zealan­ders on decent wages.

He says that if any over­seas crews are used they should be on the same terms and con­di­tions as New Zealand work­ers.