Indian sailors stranded in Norfolk port by ‘modern-day slavery’

Eventually, Saurabh Saigal could no longer look at his son. “I couldn’t stand it any more. He’s only six and suffers from allergies. When he’s ill I see the suffering in his eyes. Then I avoid talking to him by video link.”

For seven months Saigal has been separated from his family in India, effectively imprisoned on a ship moored off the coast of Norfolk. A routine inspection of the offshore supply vessel Malaviya Twenty at Great Yarmouth last June found what unions describe as “modern-day slavery” – 15 Indian crew had not been paid for months while working in the oilfields of the North Sea.

Unwilling to desert the ship without getting paid, its crew have been left abandoned in the Norfolk port. Their fate offers a stark example of what an unfettered liberalised market does to a workforce – globalisation at its most raw.

The Malaviya Twenty, which has worked for major oil companies including BP, also stands as a symbol of the decline of the British shipping industry, where wages have been incessantly undercut to the point that cheap foreign labour can be exploited.

This week the crew’s captivity is scheduled to end after an Indian bank agreed to settle £320,000 in unpaid wages, allowing them to head home. “Hopefully it’s just a case of booking their flights home. It’s been a huge struggle but soon they’ll be free,” said Paul Keenan, an inspector for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, which has battled to recoup the crew’s missing wages.

For more than 200 days their liberty has extended to little more than the confines of the 236ft (72m) long supply ship moored in the river Yare, opposite the historic centre of Great Yarmouth. Days start at 4am, the crew maintaining the ship, checking the engines, alternating shifts with the watchman before, and exchanging WhatsApp messages with their families. Occasionally, they play table tennis or visit the makeshift gym in the freezing bowels of the ship. Sometimes they wander over Haven Bridge into town, peering at the cafes on King Street where they cannot afford to eat, the amusement arcades on Marine Parade they can never hope to play. An oddity of immigration law allows sailors to wander into the nearest port and town but no further, creating a peculiarly circumscribed existence.

Mostly, the crew just wait. Every day they hope for news that their purgatory will be over. Keenan feared the crew might become so disillusioned that they returned home, to be replaced with fresh seafarers who would be similarly exploited. His union contacted border officials at Gatwick airport and Mumbai warning that men claiming to be headed to work on the Malaviya Twenty should be placed on a watchlist. The case was described as the “systematic abuse of Indian seafarers”. Keenan said: “We had to stop the bloodline, guys coming over here who in turn would not be paid.”

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Although the crew has remained physically active, their mental health has declined profoundly. “It’s been very difficult, knowing no money is going home to our families to cover their basic needs,” said Carlos Menezes, from Goa. Typically, the crew each sent at least 80% of their wages back home to pay for rent and food. Menezes, 50, an experienced maritime machinist, said his family had struggled desperately after he received just a single month’s pay since April.

Initially, his family sold gold jewellery to make ends meet. Finally, Menezes secured an emergency 8.7% interest loan of 100,000 rupees (£1,190). Sacrifices needed to be made. His 14-year-old daughter, a Christian, was a talented performer of the Hindu dance Bharatanatyam. “She was so good that people could not believe she wasn’t Hindu,” smiled Menezes. His daughter has had to drop her dance lessons because she cannot afford them. Special occasions are also a thing of the past. “My family are barely surviving. They cannot afford to visit people, to call anybody. Christmas was just a normal day, like any other, because they couldn’t celebrate,” he said.

Saigal, 43, from the city of Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, agrees that his family have been severely penalised. “Also, they have had to deal with a lack of certainty, it’s very hard for them. My daughter wants help with her school projects but I am here, I can only help so much,” he said, gazing over Great Yarmouth from the ship’s bridge and, beyond, to the North Sea. Saigal has also been forced to stop sponsoring the education of three poor children from his neighbourhood.

Keenan – called “the saviour” by the crew – describes how during his first visits aboard the Malaviyan Twenty, Saigal would help him tirelessly with his paperwork. As the months dragged by Keenan would observe him staring absent-mindedly for hours out to sea.

Several of the crew decided they could take no more. In November the chief engineer departed after his wife became ill. Another crew member went home early when his father took sick. Of those that remain, all agree that the low point, aside from Christmas, arrived at the start of January when they learned the vessel’s supplies of fuel for electricity, lighting and sewage ran down to the last 48 hours before the Mumbai-based owners sent an emergency allowance.

Even now, potentially days from returning home, most of the men’s families refuse to believe the wait is nearly over. “We’ve given them so many false promises, to keep their spirits up, that they think we’re telling lies,” said Saigal.

Across the Yare from the Manaviya Twenty stands the Nelson Museum, the Georgian merchant’s house dedicated to the vice-admiral and a reminder of an era when England dominated the waves. Much has since changed. Globalisation has undermined Britain’s shipping trade. The simple fact that the Malaviya Twenty, an Indian supply ship sailing between the British coast and UK offshore oilrigs, ended up stranded at Great Yarmouth illuminates much about global shipping and the attendant vulnerability of seafarers.

Despite operating in British waters, its Mumbai-based operator need not pay the UK minimum wage: rates can easily be a third less than for British sailors. Last month the maritime trade union Nautilus International wrote to the government to denounce the predicament of the Malaviya Twenty as “appalling”. The letter outlined how some seafarers are paid as little as £2.43 an hour.

Yet even the Indian crew risked being undercut, forced to travel more than 4,200 miles to find work in the North Sea. Even that was in the ultra-competitive “spot market” where vessels are chartered at short notice by oil companies. “It’s very pressured, you’ve got to be the best,” said Saigal. It is dangerous work too. One of the crew, Ramesh, 25, describes the vessel pitching in an eight-metre swell, violently rocking his body to articulate the ship’s roll.

Charter rates for North Sea supply boats have, according to maritime experts, plunged so low that many vessels operate at a loss, eventually forced to lay off crew and conserve fuel. Even the cut-price wages of the Malaviya Twenty’s crew would ultimately prove too high for its Mumbai owners. Yet major oil companies recently relied on the ship with Saigal stating that Perenco, an independent Anglo-French oil and gas company, was a client along with BP back in 2011. Its sister ship, the Malaviya Seven, whose crew are currently stranded in Aberdeen, was chartered by BP as recently as June.

One positive to emerge from the episode has been the reaction of Great Yarmouth. Crew describe a daily rollcall of residents from the town – which registered one of the highest votes (71.5%) to leave the EU in the June referendum – coming to the ship carrying flasks of coffee and biscuits. Ramesh recounts one visitor on Christmas Day. “A lady came up the gangway carrying a big bag of chocolates and fruit. She gave them to us and then left, she wouldn’t even leave her name. The people of Great Yarmouth have been extremely kind,” he said.

The future for the shipping industry looks less benevolent. Britain remains the most vociferous lobby in Europe against reform to protect decent pay and safety conditions for seafarers, ensuring that ship owners continue hiring cheaper non-EU crews.

Keenan says that every month the union comes across crews who have not been paid. For the men of the Malaviya Twenty, for most seafarers, an uncertain future awaits. Menezes, who has worked for the Indian firm that operated the ship for 27 years, said: “I used to be very proud of my employer – now I have no idea what happens next or where I will end up.”