Sincere Industrial has seen one of its bulkers banned from Australia for 12 months after the ship’s crew was found to have been allegedly underpaid by AUD 118,000 ($86,400).
The discovery was made last week during an inspection of the 28,306-dwt AC Sedosa (built 2008) at a port in Queensland, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).
During AMSA’s investigation, evidence was collected which confirmed that a number of crew had only been paid half of their wages since October 2019.
The maritime regulator said the shipowner had “attempted to conceal” from authorities the fact that it had underpaid the ship’s crew.
“The ship’s master and Sincere Industrial Corporation, attempted to conceal the underpayment from inspectors by only producing a fabricated wage record which indicated that these seafarers had been paid in full,” AMSA said.
“A second wage record showed that these seafarers had in fact been deliberately underpaid, while some senior members of the crew had been paid above their agreed rates.”
AMSA said it has since received evidence that crew had been paid the outstanding wages and a rectification action plan developed by the operator to “ensure the same failure did not reoccur”.
Sincere Industrial had been contacted for comment, but had not replied at the time of publication of this story.
Maritime labour convention breaches
“This is the fourth ship that we have banned this year for serious and shameful breaches of the maritime labour convention,” said AMSA general manager operations Allan Schwartz.
“It’s hard to believe that some operators still think that it is acceptable to underpay their seafarers. AMSA will not tolerate such deliberate and deceitful mistreatment of seafarers on ships that sail in Australian waters.”
Schwartz said AMSA had made its position “abundantly clear” that it has “zero tolerance” for the underpayment of crew.
“I have no doubt that the financial and reputational impact that being banned from Australia has on the operator, far exceeds the cost of paying seafarers the money that they have rightfully earnt,” he added.
AMSA said the AC Sesoda joins a growing list of ships including most recently the Unison Jasper, TW Hamburg and Agia Sofia which have been banned from Australian ports after being caught treating their seafarers like “modern day slaves”.
“Collectively, the seafarers on these four ships were underpaid in excess of $290,000, funds which were recovered through the actions of AMSA,” he said.
“We are sending a simple message to operators: Pay your crew properly, treat them respectfully and comply with the requirements of the maritime labour convention or you will not be welcome in Australia.”
