Despite the threat posed by piracy, sailors are more fearful of a ban on manning ships passing the pirate-plagued Somalia coast as it would put their families’ livelihoods at risk.

United Filipino Seafarers president Nelson Ramirez said a ban would
adversely affect some 229,000 Filipino sailors now working on merchant
shipping vessels around the world.

“How could we ask Filipino seamen
be pulled off ships out of fear of what might happen?” Ramirez said in
an article on the United Catholic Asian News website.

The Department
of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had earlier recommended to President Arroyo to
impose a ban on the deployment of seafarers to foreign flagships that
ply pirate-infested waters in Somalia.

Somali pirates released the
previous day a Greek-owned cargo ship and its crew after detaining it
since Nov. 10, 2009. The vessel, MV Filitsa, seized from the Indian
Ocean carried three Greeks and 19 Filipinos.

Fifty-eight Filipino
seamen on board five vessels remain in the hands of pirates, Department
of Labor and Employment (DOLE) records show.

‘Bad information’

However, Ramirez said that the DFA’s recommendation may have been based on “bad information.”

He pointed out that while seamen can always back out individually with no backlash, “a ban would cost us thousands of jobs.”

Reynaldo
Juego, legal adviser to the Philippine Church’s apostolate to
seafarers, echoed Ramirez’s concern that the ban would hurt the
Filipino sailor more than protect him.

“DFA tried banning Filipino
worker deployment to Jordan and Iraq a few years ago, but workers just
went to other places before going to the banned areas,” Juego said.

Sailors’
families will suffer because their breadwinner will not find any job in
the Philippines that will pay them as much as their overseas work,
Juego added.

“The ban will only cost sailors their jobs” and the country its competitive edge, he said.

Protection against blacklisting

He
added that without a ban, a Filipino sailor has the right to refuse
assignments in hazardous areas. Sailors can repatriate to the
Philippines without being blacklisted by the international shipping
industry if they decide to do so.

“Since they cannot be blacklisted they are protected. DOLE has this guarantee already,” he said.

The
Apostleship of the Sea (AOS) is the Catholic Church’s agency for the
pastoral care of people who earn a livelihood from the sea, their
dependents and communities.

Its former national director, Scalabrini
Father Savino Bernardi, had said he was not in favor of a ban when DFA
proposed one in 2008 because this would “paralyze the shipping
industry.”

460 Pinoy sailors abducted since 2006

DOLE records
show 460 Filipinos manning 38 ships have been abducted by Somali
pirates since 2006, and 402 among them have been released.

One Filipino seafarer died while in captivity due to an illness aggravated by the prolonged detention, Ermita added.

Money sent home by overseas Filipino sailors reached a record US$2.5 billion in the first nine months of 2009, DOLE reported.

Source: GMANews

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