16 foreigners stuck on a ship along the Mombasa Coastline will be smiling all the way to the bank after they secured a Ksh45 million payout.
The crew, which had been living on the ship named FV RA Horakhty, reached an agreement with the owner to settle their dues plus interest since they arrived.
They had lamented that the owner of the ship abandoned them since March 2021 without their wages and threatened to auction the ship.
They filed a suit against their employer demanding pay of Ksh28 million together with interest among other charges.
The crew consisted of three individuals drawn from South Korea, Six from Indonesia, and the rest from Vietnam, according to a report by Nation.
The owner of the ship, however, refuted the claims stating that the Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) and its captain was seeking to review the pay.
The parties, however, quickly reached an agreement to settle all the wages before the case proceeded to full hearing.
They later signed an agreement in which the seafarers, who have been living on the ship since, and will be paid the full amount to cover their repatriation costs as well as backdated wages.
This comes a year after another crew of nine Syrians complained that they were stuck on a ship in Mombasa for two years and had been forced to live under horrible conditions.
The group of nine individuals had in May 2021 raised concerns that they would not leave the ship since they risked losing their unpaid dues.
When the ship, MV Jinan, docked, it unloaded a cargo of construction materials but its staff, which comprised of 18 members, were not facilitated to return home.
Nine of them were given up after and returned to their home country leaving their nine colleagues stranded.
