by James Tweedie

TRANSPORT unions gave a warm welcome yesterday to moves to rescue migrants at sea, while urging that the root causes of the crisis be tackled.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) statement came amid ongoing refugee crises in the Mediterranean and south-east Asia.

More than a thousand refugees from the war in Syria arrived in Greece by sea this week, while thousands are still feared to have been cut adrift by people traffickers off the coasts of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Last week, the EU announced plans to launch naval patrols to locate and rescue migrants crossing the Mediterranean in dangerous, overcrowded boats, where thousands have drowned since the start of the year.

And Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand reversed their policy of turning back boats carrying migrants unless they were unseaworthy.

Federation president Paddy Crumlin said: “We welcome the recent naval rescues in European waters and the reversal of the scandalous ban by Indonesia and Malaysia that prevented refugees from being brought to shore.”

He added that all available search and rescue services should be used to ease the humanitarian crisis, following the example of merchant and fishing vessels that rescued 42,000 people last year alone.

“It is good that seafarers and fishers — themselves economic migrants travelling the world at or in search of work — are no longer the first and sometimes only people saving the lives of the passengers on these decaying, human-trafficking vessels,” Mr Crumlin said.

But the maritime workers’ leader stressed that rescue must be coupled with resettlement and that conditions in the countries from which the migrants come had to be be improved.

“The responsibility for this is at the door of all of us,” he said.

Mr Crumlin also called for better regulation of shipping, especially vessels registered under flags of convenience, to prevent their use by people traffickers.

He pointed to the example of the Blue Sky-M, a Moldovan-flagged ship carrying Syrian refugees abandoned by its crew last December.

“Global inequality and lack of regulation are among the key causes of this appalling situation. It is trade unions that are doing something to rectify it,” Mr Crumlin concluded.