Concerns about crew welfare after seafarer lost overboard

The Mari­time Uni­on says that the loss over­board of a crew mem­ber aboard a bulk car­ri­er is very con­cern­ing.

The UK-flagged Berge Rishiri left Bluff early on the morn­ing of Sat­urday 27 August. The Chinese crew mem­ber was last seen at 8am on Sat­urday morn­ing and failed to report for duty at 4pm.

Health and safety author­ity Mari­time New Zea­l­and have stated the crew mem­ber is pre­sumed to have gone over­board off the Otago coast and the search is on hold.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Craig Har­ris­on says this kind of incid­ent is more com­mon than many people real­ize

He says New Zea­l­and needs to be doing more to pro­tect the wel­fare of inter­na­tion­al crews in our waters.

Mr Har­ris­on says he would like Mari­time New Zea­l­and to invest­ig­ate wheth­er the crew were hav­ing adequate rest breaks, and that they were not required to secure any cargo while under­way.

He says it is a com­mon prac­tice with some New Zea­l­and steve­dores with low stand­ards to have over­seas sea­farers lash cargo when the ves­sel is under­way, rather than shore based steve­dores doing the work in port.

The sea time the crew mem­ber had been work­ing for also needed to be invest­ig­ated, he says.

“We would like to know how long the sea­farer had been at sea and on duty and have assur­ances they were not kept on the ves­sel longer than their con­trac­ted peri­od, as we have seen huge men­tal health issues with Sea­farers basic­ally kept cap­tive on ves­sels for months and some­times years.”

Mr Har­ris­on says the Mari­time Uni­on and the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) would like the oppor­tun­ity to meet the crew and talk about their wel­fare, and what the ship­ping com­pany and also the com­pany and the cargo own­ers are doing for the crew and fam­ily of the lost sea­farer.

He says incid­ents like this can be a red flag of oth­er poten­tial issues aboard ships.

“These crew mem­bers are in New Zea­l­and waters, their work is essen­tial for New Zea­l­and, and in our view their rights and wel­fare are often over­looked.”

Mr Har­ris­on says New Zea­l­and author­it­ies must do a full invest­ig­a­tion into this incid­ent.

FACTS about sea­farers

There are around 400,000 Sea­farers work­ing on cargo ves­sels glob­ally and offi­cial fig­ures show that between 2015 – 2019, 527 were killed at sea and 509 went miss­ing.

Last year, Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) ship inspect­ors recovered more than USD $37 mil­lion in unpaid wages owed to sea­farers.

Sea­farers’ rights can be found in a range of sources. All sea­farers have rights under the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organization’s Mari­time Labour Con­ven­tion – some­times called ‘The Sea­farers’ Bill of Rights’. But crew will also likely have rights applic­able to them under vari­ous nation­al laws, flag State reg­u­la­tions and col­lect­ive bar­gain­ing agree­ments.