The seven sailors had been forced to abandon their capsized fishing vessel, the Ja­panese-flagged Gyotoku Maru No. 1, after a collision with Philippines-flagged vessel F/V Jocelyn some 370 kilo­me­ters south­west of Palau on Mon­day.

It was that vessel that eventually located and saved the crew, but only after they had been drifting at sea in a lifeboat for a day, prompting joint search efforts involving Japan, Palau and the United States.

The F/V Jocelyn took the stricken sailors to General Santos, a port city in the southern Philippines, on Tuesday.

"Upon receiving word that five Indonesians were brought to General Santos, the Indonesian Consulate General in Davao sent two officials to check on them on Wednesday," said Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, the Foreign Ministry's director for the protection of citizen overseas, in a statement on Friday.

However, due to a lack of immigration facilities at General Santos, the officials were given permission to bring the seven crewmen back to Davao City to prepare for their repatriation, Iqbal said further.

After coordinating with the consulate general and the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo, the ministry secured a commitment from the capsized vessel's agent to pay for the Indonesian crewmen’s return flights and fulfill the rights of the two Japanese fishermen.

The sailors, Romadhon, Muhammad Rafles Saputra, Teguh Wahyu Utomo, Alizar and Reza Indrawan, are currently staying on the consulate-general’s premises while they wait for their trip home.

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