4 Vizag captives return from Somalia

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, Sep 1: Four out of eight Vizagites who were held hostages at Somalia for the past 11 months returned Vizag on Friday. The other four are counting their days to come back. P Venkanna is a very happy man now, as he never thought he would see his family again in his life. He was one among the four who came back from Somalia after a long gap of 11 months in anarchaeic Somalia. The Dubai employer had allowed only P Venkanna, CH Appanna, K Tatalu and Nepali Sarma who are fishermen to return. The crew of the vessel, captain S A Raju, engineer, Riaz, AC mechanic Ravi Kumar and engine mechanic Ramu were not given permission to leave.When contacted the captain said the Dubai-based owner Abdullah might have retained them to take the vessel and dock it somewhere else. “Initially we were told that we all will be allowed to leave at a time, but they are lucky they went a little early. I hope we will start within one week after sailing this vessel wherever Abdullah says,” said Riaz.Venkanna and others were first sent from Mogadishu of Somalia to Dubai and from Dubai to Chennai on Thursday. From Chennai these four came to Vizag on Friday. Recollecting his terrible experience there Venkanna said they faced lot of water and food problem there. They used to take bath once in a month and hardly washed their clothes. They were not provided sufficient ration for survival. “Some times Indian captains of other Vessels at Mogadishu port helped us by sharing their ration with us. We are very thankful to them.” Venkanna said.Before these four started from there, an Indian captain of a Dubai vessel Hero I gave them one bag rice, 10 kilos of milk powder, one box of pickles, 10 kilos of onions, potatoes, soaps and two cartons of cigarettes. But the agony is that these small time fishermen were given only three months salary of $ 1,000 against the 11 months salary of $ 3,200. “ Thank god they at least gave us this money and sent back us to our home. Otherwise we would have died there without proper food. And nobody would have know even if we die there” Appanna said. Venkanna said that their miseries started after two months twenty days of fishing. They could catch 12 tonnes of lobster and 10 tonnes of crabs. They said that the Dubai owner might have thought it is waste spending money on these people as he incurred losses because of less catch. But these people are still surprised why Abdullah retained them for so many months by torturing them without providing minimum basic facilities. They even thanked this newspaper in taking an initiative to speak to the Indian owner that made him to negotiate with the Dubai owner Abdullah.