Maritime Union comes to assistance of distressed crew on Lancelot V

For­eign crew aboard a detained ship in Tau­ran­ga have received inter­im pay­ments totalling thou­sands of dol­lars after unions inter­vened fol­low­ing sev­er­al months of seri­ous prob­lems.

The Greek owned and Pana­man­ian flagged bulk car­ri­er Lancelot V is under arrest at the Port of Tau­ran­ga, where the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion has been work­ing with its local affil­i­ate, the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand, on behalf of crew.

Mar­itime Union offi­cials first vis­it­ed the ves­sel at the Ports of Auck­land in May.

They fol­lowed up com­plaints that crew mem­bers had not been repa­tri­at­ed to their home coun­tries after their con­tracts had expired, as well as prob­lems with pay, which was well below ILO min­i­mum stan­dards.

A Mar­itime New Zealand (gov­ern­ment agency) ship inspec­tion in Auck­land revealed defects to sev­er­al cranes.  The ship then sailed to Tau­ran­ga where she was arrest­ed by her char­ter­ers for breach of the char­ter­par­ty.  She was also detained by Mar­itime New Zealand when her annu­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion soci­ety cer­tifi­cates expired.

Crew visas expired dur­ing this time, forc­ing them to remain on board as vir­tu­al pris­on­ers until Immi­gra­tion New Zealand issued tem­po­rary visas.

Wages to the crew had stopped about two months pre­vi­ous­ly.

Mar­itime Union offi­cials from Tau­ran­ga act­ing on behalf of the ITF vis­it­ed the ves­sel and sup­port­ed crew mem­bers dur­ing this time.

Exten­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion was made to the embassies of the Russ­ian, Ukrain­ian and Fil­ipino crew mem­bers with lit­tle result.

Fol­low­ing a hear­ing in the High Court last week, US$23,000 in inter­im wages was obtained to be dis­trib­uted amongst the crew for the time being.

The ITF is seek­ing the prompt repa­tri­a­tion of all crew mem­bers to their home coun­tries once the remain­ing back pay claims, esti­mat­ed to be over US$100,000, have been resolved and for the crew to be paid at ITF rates by the char­ter­er in the mean­time.

ITF New Zealand inspec­tor Gra­hame McLaren says the prob­lems with the ship are a result of the dereg­u­lat­ed ship­ping indus­try where “flag of con­ve­nience” ship­ping has under­mined safe­ty and stan­dards.

“These ships of shame are com­ing into New Zealand ports. They are rip­ping off their crews and cre­at­ing a health and safe­ty haz­ard in ports and on the New Zealand coast.”