19 January 2024, London – The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) has today released its figures for the numbers of vessels abandoned in 2023 – which show a worrying increase on figures from the previous year.
At the ITF’s Fair Practice Committee meeting earlier this month, the latest figures were presented highlighting the work of the ITF inspectors.
Key findings included that as of November 2023 they had conduced 9,785 inspections (up 1,688 on the corresponding period on 2022). Of which:
A Philippines-based recruitment agency that unlawfully charged seafarers placement fees has had its licence suspended after the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) highlighted its illegal practices.
Eleven seafarers trapped aboard the Haj Abdulla (IMO 7702114) are at extreme risk, with the ship taking on water off Mogadishu, Somalia.
An ITF inspector was physically assaulted by a ship’s Master in an unprecedented attack which the Federation says must be condemned.
Today is Day of the Seafarer and this year's theme is ‘a future fair for seafarers’. But there is little point contemplating what a fair future looks like for the world’s seafarers while the injustices of the present so loudly demand our attention -– and action.
There’s 11,086 kilometres between São Sebastião, Brazil and the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. It’s those eleven thousand kilometres ITF Inspector Renialdo de Freitas has been working to get 16 Ukrainian seafarers back across, to their homes and families. With their wages.
Without a rudder, food, water, electricity, lights, wi-fi, refrigeration, GPS, security or safety lights, 15 seafarers sit at anchor in Manila Bay, Philippines. Abandoned on board the Spanish-flagged MV Celanova (IMO 9268394).
The ITF has come to the rescue of 10 Kenyan seafarers who had travelled to Pemba, Mozambique through Tanzania in August 2019, to work on an EU-bound vessel, MV Nina.
The seafarers were left stranded on the vessel, which had technical problems, for four months without contracts or adequate food. Their attempts to contact the Iranian owner of the vessel were met with intimidation and death threats.
ITF inspector (Liverpool, North West England and Wales) Tommy Molloy has participated in a major anti-modern-day slavery event in Liverpool, UK.
Organised by the UK Border Force at the Merseyside Maritime and International Slavery Museum, the two-day event marked national anti-slavery day and included talks from victims of modern-day slavery, charities and non-governmental organisations, as well as the ITF.
