REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesia voted for the amendment to the Maritime Labor Convention (MLC). The Convention regulates the financial right of sailors held hostage or becoming victims of sea piracy.

With the amendment the contract between the sailors and the shipowners will remain valid as long as the sailors are being held hostage by sea pirates, Labor Minister Hanif Dhakiri said after the process of voting on the MLC amendment held on the sidelines of an International Labor Conference (ILC) in Geneva Switzerland.

The ship owners will have to pay and give the salaries and other rights of the sailors as set in the working contract, Hanif said in a news release received here on Tuesday. He said the amendment also gives guarantee of repatriation of the sailors to their respective countries after their release.

However, the repatriation right would no longer be valid if the sailors failed to submit their claim after a certain duration to be regulated further in national legislation or cooperation agreement.

The MLC amendment is important although so far the number of Indonesian sailors having become victims of seas piracy are relatively small, Hanif said. "It is important as Indonesian sailors are among the largest in number in the world," he said.

Repatriation so far has been normal ones, not involving sailors who had become victims of piracy, he added.

Indonesian Ambassador to the United Nations, WTO, and other international organizations in Geneva Hasan Kleib said the MLC amendment had been proposed by a group of sailors and the result of negotiation between representatives of the governments of countries already ratified the MLC including Indonesia, and representatives of sailors and ship owners grouped in Special Tripartite Committee (STC) on MLC taking place at the ILO office in Geneva from 23-27 April, 2018 .

"The elements in the amendment are the result of a compromise of three parties to ensure that the amendment would not cause additional burden to the ship owners as well as the government," Hasan Kleib said.

So far the MLC has been amended twice - Amendment in 2014 on financial guarantee for the sailors and compensation for sailors died, or suffering long time handicap, injured and meeting accidents.

The second amendment in 2016 was on health and safety and accident prevention to eradicate abuses and bullying in ship.

Indonesia has ratified MLC through the Law no.15 in 2016 signed by President Joko Widodo on 6 October 2016. The labor Minister officially submitted the MLC ratification to the ILO Director General on 12 June 2017.

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