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When Vihaan* set off from his home in Tamil Nadu, south India, to work on a vessel crossing the Bay of Bengal into neighbouring Bangladesh, he told his family he would be gone a few months. After delivering his cargo of stone to Bangladesh’s Kutubdia Island, the marine engineer was due to head home in March 2024 to disembark at Thoothukudi port, India.
But that month, the rusting tug, the Navimar 3, which was being operated by Middle East Marine (MEM), was detained by the authorities in Bangladesh due to unpaid fees. For almost a year, Vihaan has become a virtual prisoner on board, he says, forced to work without pay to keep the vessel safe, amid strong currents where it is anchored off the island in the cyclone-prone bay. His passport and certification documents are being held by a local agent for the Dubai-based company. With no means of getting home, no visa to disembark and without supplies, he has to rely on food and water from charities and unions.
Vihaan, who has 25 years experience in the industry, says he has had “nothing but empty promises” from the Dubai company that he will be paid and allowed to leave. Screenshots of increasingly desperate messages between the engineer and the company attest to this. He longs to see his wife and 14-year-old daughter but says he is “losing hope with every day that passes”. Since his abandonment, his family, who depend on his wages, have incurred debts that threaten to swallow 20 years of savings, and risk his daughter’s dreams of studying to become a military doctor. His wife has had to postpone hospital treatment.
When the Guardian spoke to Vihaan earlier this month, he was coughing and said he felt weak and feverish. There is no medicine on board, he says. He keeps working, because, despite everything, he needs to keep the crew and vessel safe, he says. The Maritime Labour Convention defines “abandonment” as two months without contractual wages, maintenance and support, or cost of repatriation.
Vihaan’s case is far from isolated. Thousands of seafarers, the backbone of the global shipping trade, are left abandoned in what the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) describes as a “cancer” of the industry. Cases have surged by 135%, from 132 vessels in 2023 to 312 last year, affecting more than 3,000 seafarers according to a joint ITF/International Labour Organization (ILO) database.
The Middle East region had the most abandoned vessels, at 108, while the port state with the highest number is the United Arab Emirates, with 42 abandoned vessels in its waters in 2024. The second highest was Turkey, with 25. UEA companies are also responsible for the largest proportion of all abandonments. The Federal Transport Authority in the UAE was approached for comment but did not respond.
Seafarers in the ITF/ILO database have often been left with little or no food and dirty drinking water, while wages owed to them worth $20m (£16m) went unpaid in 2024, of which the ITF has recovered $10.4m so far, it says. Things became so bad for one distressed crew member that they were admitted to hospital after a failed attempt to take their own life, ITF says.
These seafarers are in a catch-22: with no means of returning home, they stay on board in deteriorating conditions, hoping employers who owe them wages will pay up, as once they leave the ship, the chances of them receiving unpaid wages diminishes.
Most abandoned vessels are sailing under a “flag of convenience” country such as Panama or Palau, ITF says. This system, of allowing a shipowner to register a vessel in a country other than their own, with often less stringent labour laws, makes it more difficult to take legal action against shipowners.
A further disturbing aspect of the industry is the increasing danger to seafarers unwittingly caught up in conflicts. This was highlighted in November 2023, when the 25-strong crew of the cargo ship, the Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader, were taken hostage by Yemen’s Houthis at the start of a campaign of attacks in the Red Sea linked to the war in Gaza. They were released last month after the ceasefire.
And last July, 16 seafarers found themselves abandoned in a conflict zone on board the Captain Tarek cargo ship during Israeli airstrikes on Hodeidah port, in Yemen, which reportedly killed three people and wounded 87.
Satya Rahul, the second officer on the Tarek, from Delhi, says he had feared for his life and the life of the crew: “I was too much afraid. My life was in danger during the strike. I was doing my watch duties … because [at sea] we can’t leave responsibility on others. If anything goes wrong, then anything can happen with the life of all crew.”
Rahul, 31, says he was forced to work for seven months unpaid. The crew of the Tarek, eight Indians and eight Syrians, had to live on one portion of noodles or rice every one or two days and a litre of water a day between them, he claims. They had no electricity and no fuel, he says. Rahul is now home, along with five of the other Indian seafarers and the eight Syrians, who sought help from the ITF.
Steve Trowsdale, the ITF’s head of inspectorate, says: “Seafaring has become more dangerous in recent years as conflicts have seen innocent workers targeted.” Sandra Bernal, the Asia Pacific region coordinator at ITF who has been dealing with Vihaan’s case, says that ITF has now repatriated two separate crews of the Palau-flagged Navimar. A third crew, from Indonesia, boarded this month, Vihaan claims.
MEM operates tugboats such as the Navimar 3 via a “bareboat” charter, which allows it to use ships owned by a third party. AD Ports Group, a state-owned organisation in Abu Dhabi, is the beneficial owner of the Navimar 3, via subsidiaries. The beneficial owner is whoever exercises effective control over the vessel, though they can lease it out via subsidiaries. AD Ports made 1.36bn UAE dirhams (£300m), in profit in 2023, according to its accounts.
Last month, after pressure from the ITF, Vihaan received his first good news in a year – he received half of the wages owed to him. He is still owed $27,000 (£21,000), according to Bernal.
Mohamed Arrachedi, ITF’s flag of convenience coordinator in the Arab world and Iran, has dealt with many distressing cases over his career. “We cannot normalise abandonment,” he says. “It is immoral, inhumane. It is like modern slavery.”
In the time since he was interviewed for this piece, Vihaan has moved onshore, but is still awaiting his unpaid wages. Middle East Marine was approached for comment. When contacted, AD Ports suggested the Guardian’s information was out of date but it hasn’t been possible to contact them since. The Guardian also made extensive efforts to identify the owners of the Captain Tarek but without success.
* Name has been changed. Seafarers fear reprisals and blacklisting by employers for speaking out
