The first seafarer of the trawler "Nikolay Solodchuk" returned home

According to Nikolay Sukhanov, Сhairman of the Far Eastern Territorial  Organization of the Seafarers’ Union of Russia (SUR FETO), one of the crew members of the troubled trawler has gone home to Primorye right now, while the rest crew should return home after the completion of development of the harvest quota for shellfish.

- The seafarers say that they have already finished that work, -  SUR FETO Chairman said. Immediately after that they must be fully paid up and sent home. This should happen before the New Year. One of the crew members, a resident of Nakhodka, was sent home on the 1st of December for health reasons, he received all wages owed to him.

The crew of the Russian-flagged fish refrigerator trawler  “Nikolay Solodchuk” which currently stays at the Walvis Bay port in Namibia, earlier applied to SUR FETO  for assistance in recovering their wages and repatriation. It’s 11 Russian crew members were employed for work on board the trawler between August 2019 and February 2020. Their employment agreements were concluded for six months and expired long ago. In addition, the crew members have not received any wages since February. Their wage arrears amounted to RUB20 million at the time of the application. The vessel is chartered, it is operated by a foreign shipowner. SUR assisted the crew to receive the part of their backwages – RUB3.5 million, and also applied to the Far Eastern Investigative Directorate for Transport of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on this issue, where an audit was started.

Earlier, Nikolay Sukhanov also said that the seafarers should be fully paid up in December   according to the agreement signed between the ship's charterer and the crew.

At the moment, 10 Russians – from Primorye, Kamchatka, Khabarovsk Region and Krasnodar - are staying on board so far.

The Source: TASS