Greece's Diavlos Salvage and Towage has abandoned an anchor handling tug-supply vessel (AHTS) in Norway after crew went unpaid for six months, said unions and port-state authorities.
Officials of the Norwegian Maritime Authority (NMA) said all crew members on the 12,240-bhp Diavlos Force (built 1983) have been repatriated. Now, the ship appears abandoned after an insurance payout covering the unpaid wages.
Diavlos did not respond to telephone enquiries seeking comment.
The ship is under arrest by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), which is working on behalf of the crew. Proceeds of an auction sale would go to crew compensation. The total crew claim comes to some $238,000, only some of which has been paid.
The four months' payout came from UK P&I Club through its management company, Thomas Miller.
Bergen-based ITF inspector Syver Grepstad told TradeWinds that this is the first P&I insurance payout of crew wages in Norway pursuant to the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC). MLC amendments mandating crew wage payment took effect in 2017.
But obstacles remain. A court order to auction the ship could take as much six months because Diavlos has no legal representation in Norway, Grepstad said.
Nor are the proceeds of an auction guaranteed to cover the claim.
Under the MLC, the P&I Club's claim for the wages it has paid out has an equal standing to the remaining part of the crew claim, said Grepstad.
Diavlos Force arrived in Norway in September towing the hull of Prysmian Group's 27,500-get cable layer Leonardo Da Vinci (built 2020) from Fincantieri's Vard Tulcea shipyard in Romania for outfitting at its Vard Brattvaag yard.
While the tow was underway, however, crew members' families alerted the ITF. NMA inspectors checked the ship's payroll during a port-state control (PSC) inspection and confirmed that the crew had gone unpaid for six months.
That led to the ship's detention and weeks of work by the ITF in collaboration with the NMA to get the crew paid off and repatriated. Insurance covered repatriation expenses plus the four months' wages.
The seafarers hailed from Greece, Russia, the Philippines, India and Indonesia, and all have been returned there, according to Grepstad.
Grepstad said the owner told crew members they would be able to go home if they dropped their wage claims. He said they were wise to reject that offer. The money from the hull towage contract never reached the crew, he said.
Port-state authorities said crew conditions remained a continuing target of their work.
"The case with the Panama-registered ship shows that it is important that we also check working and living conditions when we board a vessel — something we do now to an even greater degree than a few years back," said Alf Tore Sorheim, head of the NMA's operational inspections department.
"The great majority of our inspections fortunately show that most seafarers have good working and living conditions, but even so there are still far too many cases in the course of a year that show that there are still shipowners out there that do not take their seafarers seriously.
"Those are the ones we target to find and stop."
