Sixteen crew members of a cargo vessel, which was ‘arrested' in Malta when its owners went bankrupt, may be abandoned on the streets today because the ship's new owners no longer require their services.
On May 5, the MV Nicea was sold at an auction for €851,000 to MSK, a shipping company registered in the Marshall Islands. The crew were told they would receive their unpaid salaries and repatriation costs from the sale.
Even though the money was transferred to the court's account, there has been a procedural delay in payment and the crew have not yet been given their dues. They are hoping to receive the money at the beginning of next week and will then, finally, be able to go home.
But things have suddenly turned sour again for the unfortunate crew members because the new owners have allegedly refused to pay their full salaries from the date of the sale of the boat two weeks ago.
MSK wants to tow the ship to Turkey as soon as possible for repairs and it, therefore, has no use left for the crew, except to prepare the ship for her voyage.
The only thing they will receive for their work will be accommodation on the boat until it heads for Turkey, something the crew said was not worth it.
They claim they are owed about €19,000 together for the past two weeks.
Since the crew members have refused to work unless they are paid their ordinary salaries, the owners have told them they will have to leave the ship, meaning they will end up on the streets.
"We are in civil Europe but they are going to discard us like garbage. This is illegal. We are human," Vladimir Motsalov, the Estonian captain of the Maltese-registered ship, said.
"Legally, we should be given the salaries we are due and if the boat is to leave before we are repatriated we should be placed in a hotel."
However, when contacted, a spokesman for MSK said the new owners were not legally responsible to pay the crew. The two weeks of pay owed could be still claimed from the sale money, the spokesman added, insisting it was not their duty to handle such payments because the money was in court.
MSK also said it was prepared to keep the crew members on board as long as they promised to leave on the day it was towed. They would be forced out today if they continued to resist the company's demands.
The crew members are upset they have not received any money for more than six months. Some of them will probably lose their homes because they defaulted on their loan repayments. Others are worried their families back home have not been able to fend for themselves without any income.
Mr Motsalov called on the Maltese authorities to help ensure the crew members did not end up homeless without any money to pay for any form of accommodation.
This is the crew's latest mishap after more than two months of problems. They first caught the media's attention after writing calls for help on bed sheets saying things like: "Help us. No food or electricity" and "Where is the ITF (International Transport Workers Federation)?"
At one time their provisions practically ran out and, with no power supply, they had to cook on deck and ended up eating barbecued spaghetti for breakfast and dinner.