The crew of m/v Global worked in hellish conditions and without a salary

The Russian crew of the m/v Global  (IMO 9165932, flag of Palau) found themselves in distress: after working for about 2.5 months in nightmarish conditions, seafarers from Rostov-on-Don, Novorossiysk and Crimea were signed off without written notice within a few hours in Indonesia and sent to a hotel to keep quarantine. But the wage for September and October was not paid and return flight was booked only to Moscow. The crewmembers reasonably sounded the alarm and asked for help from the ITF inspector in Novorossiysk, Olga Ananina.

It should be noted that the voyage was not set right away. Initially, the seafarers were hired to move the ship from Indonesia to India for scrapping. However, when the crew boarded, it became obvious that it would not be easy to do this work as the vessel was in such a «dead» state that the passage was simply impossible. The conditions on board at the same time, without exaggeration, were hellish – a huge number of cockroaches filled almost all the rooms, and regular fires in the engine room were commonplace here. For several months, in a similar nightmare, the crewmembers made every effort to resuscitate the ship, which remained in Indonesia. In October, the Russian crew was simply confronted with the fact that they were being signed off and replaced by an Indonesian crew. Within a couple of hours of the same day, they were literally kicked off from the ship and sent to the Sahid Batam Center hotel in the city of Batam for quarantine. Without prior notice, which should have been given to the seafarers at least 15 days before the discharging. Moreover passports remained in the hands of the agent. The crew was offered to fly only to Moscow, and from there to get home on their own and wait - most likely in vain - for the payment of the money due.

The ITF inspector in Novorossiysk recommended that they not leave the hotel until the situation is resolved. The first thing she did was to contact the ship's operator, the Indian company BBN Shipmanagement Pvt. Ltd,  which at first did not respond to the message at all. However, after Olga Ananina applied to the Ministry of Transport of India, the company finally entered into correspondence with her and, according to her own words, began the process of transferring money to the seafarers, promising to make sure that the crewmembers not only flew to Moscow, but were also delivered to their hometowns. According to Olga Ananina, so far the crewmembers have not received money, but there is hope that this will happen in the near future. The ITF inspector also noted one almost tragicomic feature of seafarers' contracts that struck her: «In the 26-page contract, an entire page is devoted to how crewmembers need to behave in social networks so as not to present the company in a bad light, what is and is not worth writing and posting. To be honest, this is the first time I've come across this during my work. It's just amazing that a company that hires seafarers to work on the bucket and is not particularly worried about respecting their rights, cares so much about its own reputation,» - Olga Ananina said. She also recommended that the seafarers to avoid employment in this company and, in general, be extremely careful when choosing a place of work, learning all the details about the shipowner in advance. This can be done, among other things, by contacting the Seafarers Union of Russia, where SUR representatives will willingly share the available information.