Thirteen Filipino seafarers have made it home after more than five months on board an abandoned livestock carrier ship, the Yangtze Harmony, thanks to the intervention of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).
The ship’s owners abandoned the vessel and its crew after the ship was arrested in October 2022 in Singapore over an unpaid fuel bill. That is when the shipowner also stopped paying the entire crew, leaving them without wages or a way to get home. By April, the crew were owed a massive USD429,972.
The ITF has alleged that the Harmony’s Hong Kong-based shipowner has a long history of abandoning crew, and its vessels have been detained before for violating safety and crew welfare rules.
But what the ITF’s inspectors didn’t expect was that the shipping company would abandon another crew at the same time in addition to the Harmony.
Between the Yangtze Harmony and the Yangtze Fortune, the ITF’s months of advocacy would recover USD1 million in back pay owed to the crew, as well as flights home for a total of 43 seafarers.
Soar Harmony Shipping Ltd abandoned the Yangtze Fortune after the Harmony’s sister vessel, also a livestock ship, was seized by the Australian Federal Court at Portland, Victoria, over the owner’s refusal to make urgent repairs.
