Justice for Seafarers

JUSTICE FOR SEAFARERS

'Please Father, give us a blessing.' Suddenly seventeen Burmese seafarers fell to their knees in the centre of Perth International Airport, in Western Australia.

For the past three or four days, I had been in contact with the Captain of the San Piers, the local shipping agent representing the owners, and the Secretary of the local Waterside Workers Union, trying to get the men to return to their ship.

The problem had started when these seventeen men came to my office in the Flying Angel Club in Fremantle, Western Australia, to complain about their conditions on board the ship. Having listened carefully, I sensed that they probably did have cause to complain. I therefore contacted the local representative of the Waterside Workers, with whom I had a good relationship, and he in turn contacted the tugs in the port, requesting that they did not give assistance to enable the ship to leave port.

Knowing that the ship could not leave port, we now began to listen more carefully to the seafarers. They complained about the inadequate medical facilities where the few drugs were all marked in Japanese which no one on board spoke; insufficient bed linen which forced the men to search through the engine rag bag for material; lack of sanitation in which the toilets did not flush and the showers had no water; the non-payment of family allotments back in Burma for eight months, which represented half their wages; inadequate food rations because the daily allocation had been cut from $4 a day to $2.50 a day; physical and mental abuse by two senior officers, one of whom had sought to stab a crew member; and the under-payment of wages, whereby the Master kept two sets of books in the safe, one stating the official wage which they were forced to sign else face dismissal, the other the actual wages which they received.

Whilst the ship may have appeared clean and smart from the outside, inside, the cabins, galley, mess rooms and toilet facilities were filthy.

Some of the men had paid between $US4,000 and $US10,000 to a manning agency in Rangoon in order to secure a job. The money had been raised by selling their homes or by borrowing at high interest rates using their families as bond and security. They planned to repay such loans by using the 'black market', whereby they could expect an exchange rate of $45 as opposed to $7, the Burmese Government official rate of exchange. In addition, the head office of the manning company in Hong Kong were deducting a further $8 a month from their allotments, although the practice was illegal.

After negotiations, all the deficiencies on board were made good, using the muscle power of the ITF. Blankets were dry cleaned; sanitation made operable; the galley cleaned and repaired, new fridges and washing machines were installed; the hospital’s drug cabinet restocked; life rafts made seaworthy; allotments, currently held up by the Burmese Seamen’s Employment Division in Burma, valued at $10,000, repaid direct to the men and outstanding wages in excess of $170,000 paid to the men by the owners.

Even after having agreed to return to work, the men still had many genuine fears which they shared with me. The ship could be diverted en route to Esperance and scuttled with the owners claiming the insurance money, or allegedly sabotaged so that the owner could claim money back from the men for the damage they had supposedly done; or worse still, the Burmese government could be waiting for them at Esperance and take their passports from the Master. Some of the men were already wanted by the military dictatorship for their involvement in the democratic movement, and some of their wives and children had already been imprisoned.

Due to the early arrival of a replacement Filipino crew, the men were able to fly back from Perth, but before they left, they asked for a blessing.

Incidentally, the shipping agent, who represented the ship owner, asked me to purchase the tickets home for them and charge the agency. This may sound an odd way of doing business, but if the shipping agent, who was a Christian, had bought the tickets, it would have been to Rangoon by the most direct route, and the ship owner might have his 'heavies' waiting to remove the back pay from the seafarers by force, whereas, if I bought the tickets, I could send them home via Bangkok airport, where they could easily lose themselves en route.

I later received letters from many of their families, thanking me for what I had done and giving me a progress report of their whereabouts.

Although this incident took place in the mid 1980s, such cases continue to occur with some unscrupulous ship owners. I found myself spending more and more time seeking justice for seafarers as the word began to spread far and wide. When I came to return to the UK, the national shipping newspaper had an article about my ministry over the past twelve years. The heading should have been 'Terry, the Flying Angel of Mercy'. Unfortunately, the person could not spell and had put ‘Terry, the Fling Angle of Mercy'.