16 crew members of Kenyan-flagged ship stranded at Port of Mombasa

An oil ship makes its way towards the Port of Mombasa on Friday on October 29, 2021. [Kelvin Karani, Standard]

Sixteen crew members of a Kenyan-flagged fishing vessel,  Ra-Horakhty, are stranded at the Port of Mombasa.

They were allegedly abandoned by the owners of the ship in March this year and have not been able to move out of port's Liwatoni Fisheries jetty since March this year.

Catholic church-owned international seafarers' charity- Stella Maris official, Ms Margaret Masibo said this was the latest case of crew abandonment.

The Ra-Horakhty incident adds the crew to the list of seafarers abandoned at sea when shipowners walk away from their vessels.

Ms Masibo said the crew ran out of all food except for some old vegetables because the vessel owners stopped providing them with fresh supplies.

She said that crew members they interviewed told them that they were owed wages for the last eight months were increasingly worried about family members who are struggling to survive because of the loss of income. 

Ra-Horakhty is crewed by Indonesian, Korean and Vietnamese nationals.

At first, there were Kenyans and Tanzanians on board, but they have since left the vessel.

''We have stepped in to provide emergency relief for the remaining crew, supplying a week’s worth of groceries, including oil, meat and rice. The seafarers are also in need of fresh water and diesel to run the ship’s generator,'' Masibo said.  

“We were informed of the crew’s dire situation by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) inspector, Betty Makena who is based here. So we went to visit the vessel to assess the situation and see how best we could help. We invited the local Mission to Seafarers team to assist in our response," said Masibo.

She said that they had a lengthy conversation with the captain of the ship, who said he and his crew were distressed, frustrated, hungry and exhausted.

Stella Maris understands that the men all signed one-year contracts, in excess of Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) limits.

''The contracts of six Indonesian fishermen expired five months ago but they are still on board. They are unable to leave the port area because their documents are no longer valid. The crew, led by the captain, has begun to pursue legal action,'' she said.

She added that the situation is becoming increasingly hopeless, and no one knows how long a court case will take, but Stella Maris will keep looking out for the crew’s wellbeing and monitoring the situation.

In one of the incidents recorded at the port, crew members of a deregistered Zanzibari cargo ship, Mv Jihan, which was sold off to offset crew costs and now decommissioned, saw 11 crew-members abandoned aboard the vessel for close to two years.

The MV Jihan crew were mostly from Syria and were abandoned at the port in October 2019 with an initial 18-man crew.

Seven travelled back home, leaving 11 relying on mercy from among others the Mission to Seafarers in Mombasa, a section of Mombasa business community and the Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA).

With the Covid-19 pandemic at its peak then, the 11 spent time aboard the ship that was anchored near Port Reitz anchorage within the port until an admiralty court ruled that the vessel be sold off and proceeds used to pay off the sailors early this year.

 According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Abandonment of Seafarers database, 57 ships have been reported abandoned since the start of 2021.

The ITF and seafarers' organizations are often the first responders in these cases, advocating for the victims and providing them with supplies when low-end shipowners skip out.