Fishers on a 50-year-old ‘death trap’ trawler should not be made to go back to sea, even to sail to a repair yard, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) is demanding. The fishing vessel Santa Isabel, flying under the Belize flag, has been detained by maritime authorities in the port of Vigo in northern Spain since 10 May 2023, after the ITF drew attention to its ‘appalling’ state, as well as the ‘intolerable’ conditions for crew observed by an ITF inspector. ‘The vessel is fundamentally unsafe,’ said Luz Baz, the ITF coordinator who boarded the ship to verify conditions. The crew is from Senegal, Peru, Indonesia, and Spain. Most of the non-EU fishers just want to collect owed wages and have the owners meet their responsibility to arrange for them to return home. ‘These fishers should not be expected to spend another minute risking their lives in these atrocious conditions,’ said Baz.
Source: ITF news release.