• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 05 / 18 / 2011

---

Ten Cubans members of an 11-men crew aboard a tugboat that sank off the coast of Portugal are safe, official daily Juventud Rebelde reported.

The Cubans aboard the Panama-flagged “Antártico” had been hired by a Spanish company, Latin Crew S.A., on behalf of Boluda Corporación Marítima S.A., which operated the tug boat. The Cartagena-based Antártico was pulling a floating dike to the Spanish port of La Coruña when it sank in the Atlantic Ocean.

Cuban state agency Selecmar Ship Management provides some 2,000 personnel a year to freighter, cruise ship, ferry and oil platform operators. Selecmar provides officers, ship mechanics and hotel service experts to mostly European companies such as Latin Crew, Fred Olsen, Nordstrand and Gasnaval, generating an estimated $10 million in annual agency fees. Most of the contract workers are graduates of the Academia Naval Granma and Cuban tourism schools.

“Young Cuban workers consider these jobs very attractive, from a social and economic standpoint, in comparison to on-shore jobs,” a Selecmar executive said during a business presentation at a trade fair in Brazil in 2007. The on-board jobs provide higher-than-usual salaries, often in hard currency, as well as tips and visits to foreign ports with opportunities for purchases.

In April, a Panama-flagged freighter with 13 Cuban crew members sank off the coast of Belize; three Cubans are missing.

The 10 Cubans on board the Antártico were picked up by ships taking them to French and Belgian ports, from where the Cuban government will make efforts to bring them home “as soon as possible,” according to Juventud Rebelde.

Source: www.cubastandard.com/2011/05/17/cuban-crewmen-safe-after-sinking/