Late payments to migrant fishers 'not deliberate': Shipowner

Taipei, Aug. 9 (CNA) The owner of the Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel You Fu said Friday it had not deliberately delayed payments to crew members for 15 months and responded to some of the allegations made by Indonesian fishers working on the ship.

Some allegations by the Indonesians made on Wednesday were "false" and hurt the image of Taiwan's distant water fishing industry, Kung Kun-tung (孔坤桐), a director at Taiwan Tuna Longline Association, of which Pingtung-based You Fu is a member, told a news conference.

One crew member claimed that his wife had a miscarriage and urgently needed You Fu's labor broker to transfer the wages he was owed, but his request was denied.

Presenting a transfer slip, Kung said a cash transfer was made to a designated account.

The crew members seemed to suggest that they often ran out of food and had to eat fish bait and instant noodles, but this was also untrue, Kung said, presenting receipts for NT$1.6 million (US$49,445) worth of food, which she said was proof crew members ate normally.

Kung also denied that the skipper had "seized" their passports, saying they were held for safekeeping.

Due to falling fish prices amid high inflation and soaring fuel prices, the shipowner encountered cash flow problems and had to source funds to pay the migrant fishers, who declined to be paid in installments, Kung said.

When they finally had the money on Tuesday and were ready to pay the crew members the next morning, the interpreter could not locate them because they had gone with NGOs to Taipei for the news conference on Wednesday, Kung said.

Kung questioned why the NGOs took the crew members to Taipei right before the shipowner was about to pay them. As for accusations by crew members that they were subjected to verbal abuse by the skipper, the shipowner's wife, who was also present at Friday's news conference, said that individual was temperamental and had been dismissed when they docked at a port in Samoa in September last year.

All fishers who were owed wages were paid in full on Thursday under the supervision of the Fisheries Agency, she said.

Meanwhile, Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔), a senior researcher at the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, which co-organized Wednesday's news conference, denied that they had tried to show Taiwan's distant waters fishing industry in a negative light by highlighting an isolated case.

The NGOs urged the government to stiffen rules in the Act for Distant Water Fisheries to prevent employers from committing acts of "wage theft," Shih said.

Withholding salary payments to crew members blamed on cash flow issues is against the Action Plan for Fisheries and Human Rights promulgated by the Fisheries Agency, Shih said.

Even though the shipowner claimed they held the crew members' identification documents for safekeeping, such behavior is flagged by the International Labor Organization as an indicator of forced labor, he added.