The chief engineer on a livestock carrier has hardly left his ship in a decade or been paid a salary in nearly seven years.

Union officials are pursuing wages and repatriation for chief engineer Abdul Naser Saleh and fellow crewmen, but they claim the Tanzanian flag state is not responding to their urgent messages.

Saleh, a Syrian national, took a job on the 1,600-dwt Jeddah Palace I (then Al Maha, built 1979) on 20 September 2012, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).