The 200 Moroccan sailors blocked at the port of Sète have finally come out of their reserve. They demonstrated, Friday 25 May, on the quays and refused to manoeuvre to move their three ships and give way to that of the Italian company Grandi Navi Veloci (GNV) which should ensure the connection with Tangier from today.

The crews of the Moroccan company Comanav-Comarit are making the movement of their ships conditional on obtaining their salaries frozen for five months and obtaining a "disembarkation voucher for leave" allowing them to assert their rights on land and to be embarked on other boats if they wish. "The message we want to convey to the Moroccan side is clear: either it prepares our disembarkation immediately and in dignified conditions, or it prepares coffins from now on to bury us in Morocco", blurted out one of the protesting sailors.

The latter believes, like all his colleagues, that it is up to the Moroccan government to intercede for the obtaining of the document they are demanding. Failing which, the Italian boat and its 800 passengers will remain at anchor.

Same assessment on the side of Marc Chevallier, president of the port, who thinks that the situation has become unbelievable and that it is time for the Moroccan government to intercede with the ship captains so that they agree to give the sailors their disembarkation booklets.

The president of the port of Sète sees in the latest developments of the situation, a blockage of a possible negotiated solution allowing to obtain the movement of the ferries and thus to clear the quay lines to welcome, this Monday, the boats of the Italian GNV, to which the line was entrusted by the Moroccan authorities for a duration equivalent to one year. The catch is that the Italian operator will only take over the line, but not the Moroccan personnel blocked in Sète.

A move in exchange for which the port of Sète had committed to draw a line under its position as a preferred creditor so that the sailors could be paid from a possible sale of the ferries.

However, the head of the port is not the only one to get angry. Several parties have started to express their fed-up attitude in the face of the rotting of the situation. Pascal Pouille, ITF (International Transport Workers' Federation) inspector, described the problem as political and even went so far as to call on France to set its diplomacy in motion.

Indeed, the stoppage of the Sète-Tangier-Nador line caused the traffic of the port of Sète to fall by 6.38% in the 1st quarter of 2011 and by 888,005 tonnes instead of 948,472 during the same period.

This is also the case for other traffic which has fallen sharply, such as solid bulk (-22.29%), miscellaneous goods (-20.96% including -39% for containerised goods), and the number of ship rotations (29.25%), i.e., 375 instead of 530.

To remedy this situation, the French State has committed to paying 300 euros for the repatriation of each Moroccan sailor and to pay the costs of escorting them back, i.e., the equivalent of 60,000 euros.

For its part, the Moroccan government was content to send on the spot, Saturday 19 May, Aziz Rabbah, Minister of Equipment and Transport, and Abdelouahed Souhail, Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, who were content to remind the Moroccan sailors that the current Executive is still looking for all possibilities to save Comanav-Comarit and maintain the maximum number of jobs. According to a statement from the Hérault prefecture, published on the occasion, the visit of the two ministers was intended to meet directly with the blocked sailors and provide them with information with a view to finding a solution and safeguarding the interests of these crews as much as possible. In other words, it was nothing more than an interview intended to hear the distress of the sailors, to collect their opinions and expectations. In fact, the latter expect nothing other than their due and this has been going on for five months.