Samoa's remaining 297 seafarers working and stranded overseas have been given the green light to return home in a repatriation flight next month.
A repatriation flight in January has been given the go-ahead. (file image). Photo: 123rf.com
This includes five who had contracted Covid-19 in April and one sailor in custody in Florida for allegedly assaulting another sailor.
Arrangements will be made between the MSC shipping company and the Ministry of Health to deal with them before entering the country.
Samoa Shipping Company chief executive Lautimu'ia Uelese Vaai, who is behind the arrangements for Samoans' employment overseas, said MSC was paying for all sailors' travel expenses to go home.
It was not clear when they would they go back to their overseas contracts.
Vaai said Samoa would not get the annual revenue from the seafarers of between $US7 million and $US9 million because of the decision.
Samoan sailors had been due to travel home on 27 November on what was supposed to be the first direct flight from the US to Samoa.
However, the flight from Los Angeles was cancelled at the last minute after a sailor who had been a passenger on a 13 November flight from New Zealand tested positive for Covid-19.
A group of Samoan workers did manage to return home in mid November.
Twenty-seven seafarers were repatriated on a flight from New Zealand along with about 270 others, who spent the second half of the month in quarantine.
The Samoan government had earlier been accused of abandoning seamen stranded around the world because of the Covid-19 pandemic.