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Varna, Bulgaria (Maritime.bg) – For the second day in a row the Greece-based company Valiant Shipping SA is avoiding the questions of Maritime.bg related to the tragic accident from the 7th of October, during which a young Bulgarian sailor died on board of passenger RO-RO – EUROFERRY MALTA (IMO: 9108556, MMSI: 256121000).
The Greek company is the manager of the vessel (built 1995), whose owner is the Malta-based “Malta Motorways of the seas”, а subsidiary of “Grimaldi Group”.
The people at the Valiant Shipping SA office have been coming up with incredible excuses for not answering our questions these two days. The explanations of the woman that picks the phone up – presumably the secretary, are all reasoned somewhere between busy schedules of work meetings, too early calls by our reporters and the absence of a responsible person on the spot at the moment to comment.
The Greeks however will have to give an answer to the question – who’s the person from their crew that send inexperienced Bulgarian sailors to the weather deck of the vessel while en route from Cagliari to Porto Torres in an extremely tough hydro-meteorological conditions, which respectively lead to the tragic loss of a 26 years old Bulgarian sailor, born in the Danube city of Ruse.
Another one of his colleagues – 24 years old, found himself in an Italian hospital with broken legs as a consequence of “highly-professional decisions” taken by a so far unknown member of the crew.
EUROFERRY MALTA set sails at 1940 on Sunday at Cagliari heading to Porto Torres, two Italian cities located opposite to one another on the Italian island of Sardinia.
By information of Maritime.bg the crew was prepared for anticipated bad weather, doubling the lashing and securing arrangements the 90 heavy freight vehicle and 50 automobiles transported on board.
On Monday around 1030 the vessel issued a distress signal, reporting one person as a victim and one injured.
According to data issued by the Ministry of External Affairs two other Bulgarian sailors are slightly hurt during the incident, investigated by the competent authorities in Italy.
The accident has been caused by shifted cargo in a trailer on board as a consequence of heavy weather conditions, a source said.
Were the young Bulgarian seafarers cadets on board of the ship? Were they and their colleagues sent there through the Erasmus program used by many Bulgarian manning companies for receiving dividends on to the categorical detriment of the future Bulgarian sailors?
Captain Mario Avanto from the headquarters of Grimaldi Group told Maritime.bg that there is no concrete data and the questions should be referred to the Greeks.
However, Valiant Shipping SA remains silent to these and other questions as well.