23 Indian sailors stuck in China set to return home, many still stranded
23 Indian sailors stuck in China set to return home, many still stranded
The 23 Indian sailors who were stuck in China are likely to return home this week. While 10 crew members left for India on Monday, 13 others will be leaving on Tuesday.
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UPDATED: January 19, 2021 15:56 IST
India earlier said it was closely coordinating with China to bring back Indian sailors stranded on a cargo ship in Chinese waters.
Indian sailors stranded in Chinese waters for several months, including crew members of MV Jag Anand, reached Japan on Monday and are likely to reach India soon.
With each passing day relatives of the sailors stuck in their ships on Chinese waters are growing more anxious. Most of the stranded seafarers were supposed to be back with their families early last year. But a whole year has passed, during which the pandemic broke out and first vaccines to fight it were also administered, and these sailors have yet to return home.
Jimmy Tandel s father was supposed to be with his family in April last year. Gajanand Tandel started work on the ship Anastasia in July 2019 as an able seaman. But it has been 18 months now on the ship and we still don t know when he will be back, says Jimmy. She says that with the few conversations that she has with her father when the sailors on the ship get access to the internet, she can tell that the crew is physically and mentally exhausted.
The Anastasia crew has been on board for 18 months
NEW DELHI: For 13 months, he had been patient while his time on the ship kept getting extended. First, when the Covid-19 outbreak began and, then, when China would not let his ship into the Caofeidian port. But when his wife and two sons tested positive for Covid-19, the 47-year-old on the crew of MV Anastasia knew he had to get out. He made a case, relentlessly, before his captain, his company. After a month of futile attempts, he tried to slash his wrist.
“He was saved just in time,” navigation officer Gaurav Singh, 29, told TOI. “We are all losing our minds here.” For 146 days, their cargo ship has been stranded in Chinese waters. Another carrier, MV Jag Anand, has been stuck off Jingtang port since June with 23 Indian sailors on board 199 days.
Onboard the merchant ship the Anastasia, four crew members are on suicide watch.
âThey need to go home immediately or something worse will occur,â says Gaurav Singh, 29, second officer of the ship that has been stranded at anchor for nearly five months off the Caofeidian port on the Chinese coastline.
An estimated 1500 seafarers are stranded in Chinese harbours âessentially as pawns of warâ, according to Dean Summers from Maritime Union of Australia.
There are fears for the mental health of the stranded crew, pictured on the Anastasia this week.
The crews are held hostage to import restrictions imposed on Australian coal as part of a wider geopolitical feud between the two nations. Companies keen to offload thermal coal to their Chinese buyers have kept the ships at anchor hoping for a resolution, but that option disappeared when China formally banned Australian coal imports on Tuesday, throwing the $14 billion export industry into turmoil.