Kerala - Kochi   

Sailors’ families keep hopes alive

KOCHI: It has been more than a month since the cargo ship m.v. Rezzak mysteriously disappeared in the Black Sea, but so far there has been no trace of the missing ship and its 25 crewmen, including 10 sailors from Minicoy and a Mumbai-based Malayali chief engineer. But the grieving relatives are hoping against hope that the crewmen are alive and safe.

The search and rescue operations by international maritime agencies and the Turkish Coast Guard have long been wound up; the investigation by Indian authorities still has come to naught; and, the Government of India has abandoned any hope of finding the ship. But, the relatives of the seafarers, particularly those in Minicoy, are still confident that the young men will be back home safe soon.

The ship is said to have gone missing on February 19, after it left Russia for a Turkish port. The ship should have reached its destination in a day’s time, but is generally believed that it disappeared in Black Sea close to the Turkish coast amid extremely rough weather conditions.

In Minicoy, which is known as a seafarers’ island, people continue to hope for the sailors’ return. Though Lakshadweep politicians have urged the Government of India to pay an interim compensation to the families of the missing crewmen, the relatives themselves have not yet asked for any monetary relief. In fact, some of the families have not yet used the monthly ‘allocation’ money sent in by the ship’s manning agency (the allocation money is a portion of the salary sent to the families while the crewmen are at sea for months together; the remainder of the pay and perks is paid after they sign off).

A team of Nationalist Congress Party, led by A.M. Kasmi Koya, the party’s Lakshadweep unit president, had recently met the Prime Minister and urged him to order an interim aid of Rs.10 lakh to the families of the 10 sailors. Lakshadweep MP Pookunji Koya had also asked the Centre to pay monetary relief to the families.

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