KARACHI, July 1: Sixty crew members of a barge rescued by the Pakistan Navy during cyclone Yemyin are awaiting documentation before their repatriation. Most of the sailors are Indian nationals and a few others are Filipinos.

“We have been in the hotel since the morning of June 28 following our rescue. We were stranded in the cyclone,” said a crew member declining to give his name.

He hoped that they would be repatriated to India on Monday once the documentation is completed. Unwilling to reveal much else, the crew member went up to his room.

When this reporter arrived at the hotel where the sailors were staying, several members of the crew were sitting in the lobby. When asked about their experience at sea, the highly cautious crew members declined to talk and headed to their rooms.

When queried, Indian Press Consular Sanjay Mathor, speaking from a five-star hotel of the city, was not able to explain why the crew members shied away from talking to the press.

“Some of them don’t know Hindi or English,” Mr Mathor explained. However, the people this reporter was able to chat to seemed to speak fluent English.

The Indian official said that the crew members would be repatriated on Monday.

A spokesman for the Pakistan Navy, Commander Salman Ali, told Dawn they had rescued 56 crew members of a barge which was stranded in the high seas during the cyclone and were handed over to representatives of their respective countries.