Tanzanian stowaways worrying shipping

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 40

Tanzanian stowaways worrying shipping

NZPA-Reuter Mombasa, Kenya Peter Nyengo, a young Tanzanian from the sleepy coastal town of Tanga, had the trip of a lifetime after he slipped aboard the Danish cargo ship Pike Bank in the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The crew stumbled across his hideout two days out at sea, the ship put back to Mombasa to unload him but the Kenyan authorities refused to let him land because he had no papers. Nyengo sailed on to Japan and later flew home to Dar es Salaam, via Nairobi, all at the shipping company’s expense. Nyengo and other Africans with a yearning to travel and work abroad have made Mombasa a stowaway trouble spot on the world’s shipping lanes. Shippers can recall at least seven cases this year, most of them ending in great expense and inconvenience for the owners. "There is very little we

can do to stop it when the stowaways are determined," said Mr John Walters, chairman of East African Conference Lines, a secretariat of 15 European shippers. Mr Ben Gitau, chairman of the Mombasa Shipping Agents Association, told Reuters it took little ingenuity to board a ship unnoticed in Mombasa when scores of dockworkers and other people were walking up and down the gangways. In September last year two Tanzanians said they gained entry to the port by bribing the guard at the gate. Others mingle with the crowds going in when the day shift begins. Some masters post bogus destinations at the head of the gangways, substituting unattractive ports of call like Beira, Mogadishu or Dar es Salaam for more tempting cities like New York, Rotterdam or Tokyo. Most of the stowaways are Tanzanians, with a sprinkling of West Africans, who apparently know that once the

ship sets sail the Kenyans will not let them re-enter the country. Changing the course of the average container ship can cost $lO,OOO a day but shipmasters still prefer to go back to Mombasa in the hope of getting rid of their uninvited guests. “This can work out cheaper in the long run. If the stowaways have no papers the ship could be saddled with them for the rest of her life,” Mr Gitau said. The shipowners have appealed to Kenya’s immigration authorities to relax the regulations so that the stowaways can be repatriated from Mombasa as soon as the crew find them and bring them back, he said. In the case of the Danish vessel Bente Folmer, which found two strangers aboard one day’s sailing out of Mombasa, even the Danish Foreign Ministry failed to change the Kenyans’ minds. A Mombasa immigration official said the rules were quite

clear. Stowaways were prohibited immigrants and could not be allowed in whether or not their papers were in order, he said.

The shippers have also asked for stiffer penalties as a deterrent. A typical sentence was three months in prison for a Kenyan deported from Mauritius after he boarded the Polish vessel Wladislaw Lokietek illegally. Eleven stowaways paid a high price for their wanderlust last year when a Greek captain, Anotnis Piytzanopoulos, had them thrown overboard off the Somali coast. Only four of them survived.

The stowaways, all of them East Africans aged between 17 and 25, slipped aboard the ship Garifalia before she sailed from Mombasa.

Captain Piytzanopoulos and eight crew members stood trial in the Greek port of Piraeus for his. action. He was jailed for 10 years and 10 months.