Af­ter spend­ing weeks as vir­tu­al pris­on­ers on their di­lap­i­dat­ed ships, al­most 170 South Asian fish­er­men are ex­pect­ed to be­gin re­turn­ing home next week. The T&T Guardian was told that af­ter the fish­er­men's plight was un­earthed by an ex­clu­sive Guardian Me­dia Ltd re­port, of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs man­aged to con­tact their coun­ter­parts at the In­done­sian Em­bassy in Cara­cas, Venezuela to pro­vide re­lief to the strand­ed sailors.

The In­done­sian of­fi­cials are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive ear­ly next week to be­gin prepa­ra­tions for the fish­er­men's repa­tri­a­tion. How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands that lo­cal of­fi­cials had dif­fi­cul­ty in con­tact­ing Viet­namese diplo­mats, who would be re­quired to pro­vide the re­lief for their cit­i­zens.

The fish­er­men, main­ly from In­done­sia and Viet­nam, have been ma­rooned in T&T since the Tai­wanese com­pa­ny they were em­ployed by went in­sol­vent ear­li­er this year, leav­ing them with­out months of salaries and trans­port home. For the past few weeks they have tak­en refuge on the aban­doned ves­sels they were pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed to op­er­ate and were sur­viv­ing on hand­outs from yachties and con­cerned cit­i­zens.

The ships are about a kilo­me­tre off the coast from Al­can Bay in Ch­aguara­mas.