Manahau crew being denied access to representation

The Man­a­hau barge ground­ing at West­port could have led to a dis­as­ter, but crew are being pre­vent­ed from talk­ing to Union rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Carl Find­lay says there are seri­ous ques­tions emerg­ing about the inci­dent.

He says the ground­ing of the Man­a­hau could have result­ed in the loss of life and the loss of the ship if the ves­sel had come ashore else­where on the West Coast.

It was prov­ing very dif­fi­cult to talk to the Indone­sian and Myan­mar crew on the Man­a­hau, and the Union was tak­ing legal action, says Mr Find­lay.

“Our rep­re­sen­ta­tives were blocked from vis­it­ing the Man­a­hau by port secu­ri­ty act­ing on the instruc­tions of oper­a­tor WMS and the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to try and pre­vent crew from access­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion and sup­port.”

Yes­ter­day evening a Union lawyer and offi­cials had a pre-arranged meet­ing with crew and the meet­ing was inter­rupt­ed by a com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive who drove off with crew mem­bers.

“We are extreme­ly con­cerned about the atti­tude of WMS, the com­pa­ny who oper­ates the Man­a­hau, and its approach to the rights of crew and legit­i­mate pub­lic inter­est in this deba­cle.”

Mr Find­lay says it appears the sit­u­a­tion is being con­trolled by the pri­vate com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for the prob­lem in the first place, and author­i­ties need­ed to step up and assert them­selves.

The Mar­itime Union is affil­i­at­ed to the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) rep­re­sent­ing over 1 mil­lion sea­far­ers in more than 200 sea­far­ers’ unions across 106 coun­tries.

Mar­itime Union offi­cials are empow­ered to act as ITF inspec­tors aboard ships.

“Crew mem­bers should have inde­pen­dent sup­port and advice, as the com­pa­ny that put them on this ves­sel can’t be trust­ed to do the right thing.”

Mr Find­lay says infor­ma­tion about the sea­wor­thi­ness of the Man­a­hau has been for­ward­ed to the Union by sev­er­al expe­ri­enced mar­itime pro­fes­sion­als who have had inter­ac­tions with WMS.

“Some key con­cerns expressed were the Man­a­hau was under­pow­ered for the rugged West Coast mar­itime envi­ron­ment, and more suit­able for shal­low riv­er work.”

Anoth­er con­cern was that a well-informed New Zealand crew with local knowl­edge and nau­ti­cal infor­ma­tion would not have anchored in Buller Bay dur­ing the fore­cast bad weath­er.

The 97.53-metre and 3706-GT self-pow­ered barge Man­a­hau had only just come into ser­vice in August 2024 car­ry­ing min­er­al sands out of shal­low draught port West­port.

Mr Find­lay says the Man­a­hau had a for­eign crew and the flag state was Niue, despite being sup­port­ed by coastal ship­ping fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment. 

He says the Mar­itime Union sup­ports fund­ing for New Zealand coastal ves­sels, but in this case tax­pay­er mon­ey had gone towards what appeared to be an inap­pro­pri­ate ves­sel employ­ing an over­seas crew that was not even flagged to New Zealand.

“There were under­tak­ings made by the Gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­ny that sea­far­er jobs would be cre­at­ed, and what we see instead is a cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of loop­holes and short­cuts.”

“New Zealand needs to build its coastal ship­ping capac­i­ty, and that means New Zealand owned, oper­at­ed and crewed ships oper­at­ing at accept­ed and high qual­i­ty stan­dards.”

Mr Find­lay not­ed the trag­ic loss of the col­lier Kaitawa in May 1966, which sailed out of West­port and trav­elled up the west coast with coal bound for Port­land cement works in Whangarei via the North Cape.

The Kaitawa encoun­tered heavy seas off Cape Rein­ga and foundered on the Pan­do­ra Bank in heavy seas, and sank with loss of all 29 crew.

“The Mar­itime Union do not want to see a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion and we say the Man­a­hau should be removed from ser­vice pend­ing full inves­ti­ga­tion into its suit­abil­i­ty.”