The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has sought assistance from the UK government to search for five Filipino crew members who have been missing after a Taiwan-registered fishing boat caught fire on Monday last week off the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
Sixty-four of the 69 people on board the fishing boat named Jun Rong (俊榮號) were rescued and taken to safety in Port Montevideo, Uruguay, but the other five, all confirmed to be Filipinos, have not been found, Kaohsiung’s Marine Bureau said yesterday.
Rescue personnel from the Falkland Islands will continue to search for the missing crew members, it said.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of the Maritime Port Bureau
Jun Rong (俊榮) fishing company, which owns the Kaohsiung-registered boat, will try to help the 64 rescued people return to their home countries, the bureau said, adding that it would provide any assistance necessary.
The crew on the 998-tonne fishing boat comprised four Taiwanese, 22 Filipinos, 28 Indonesians, one Chinese, nine Vietnamese and five Burmese, the bureau said.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday last week issued a statement saying it remained hopeful that the five missing Filipinos would be found.
Officials at the Philippine embassy in the UK are coordinating with British authorities over the incident, the Maritime Bulletin reported on Friday.
Falkland Island authorities have confirmed that the Taiwanese boat caught fire about 110km north of the capital, Stanley, the South Atlantic News Agency Merco Press reported on Tuesday last week.
The cause of the fire was still unknown, the Taiwan Tuna Purse Seiners Association said yesterday.
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