The family of the captain of a ship captured by Somalian pirates in March 2012 said they still do not know the circumstances of his death, as they complained about the lack of information and a lack of financial support from the ship’s owner.
The captain, surnamed Chung (鍾), reportedly died during the hijacking of the Naham 3.
The ship has been back in the headlines since it was announced on Saturday that its chief engineer, Shen Jui-chang (沈瑞章), and 25 other crew members had been freed by their captors.
According to Chung’s family, since the Oman-registered ship’s capture south of the Seychelles and the captain’s reported demise, the family has been grief-struck, and his 64-year-old wife has reportedly been suffering from grief-induced dementia.
His wife lives with the couple’s second son, but the family has had to rely on Red Cross Society of the Republic of China volunteers to help care for her while the son is at work, the family said.
The family said they only received NT$500,000 (US$15,815 at the current exchange rate) in compensation from Kaohsiung-based Chien Chang Ocean Enterprise Co, which owns the ship, and that it only gave half a year’s worth of a promised monthly subsidy of NT$30,000.
The family complained that a request to the Fisheries Agency for disaster insurance payment was rejected because of the ship’s foreign registry.
Efforts to take Chien Chang Ocean to court were also dismissed because of the ship’s registry, the family said, adding they had to finance the search for evidence themselves.
Chien Chang Ocean’s Taiwanese owner, surnamed Hung (洪), was not available for comment yesterday.
Hung has previously said that he had paid the family a subsidy for two years, but had stopped payments because he needed to “save money to pay a ransom.”
Hung also rebutted Shen’s comments that the company had not tried to ransom him, saying that he had taken NT$1 million to the pirates, but Shen had told the pirates that Taiwan’s government would negotiate with them, leading the pirates to increase the ransom.
The Fisheries Agency yesterday said that it would urge Hung to take responsibility for the crew.
Agency Deputy Director-General Huang Hung-yan (黃鴻燕) said that the agency could only ask the company owner to do his best to compensate the crew members’ families because the ship was not registered in Taiwan.
In addition, it was probably not legally possible for the company’s employees to ask for government subsidies, Huang said.
Chien Chang Ocean’s office has been closed for some time.
Additional reporting by CNA
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