Licensed manning agencies (LMAs) have elevated their appeal to President Rodrigo Duterte to help bring home thousands of Filipinos seafarers, many of them already fatigued from serving beyond their contracts on board international vessels.
The Association of Licensed Manning Agencies or ALMA Maritime Group made the urgent appeal to the Chief Executive after its earlier letter—requesting an increase in inbound flight passenger limits as well as in quarantine facilities—had fallen largely on deaf ears.
In their latest letter to the President, the association of 59 licensed manning agencies in the country expressed their utmost appreciation of the Chief Executive’s strong pro-overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) stance and unequivocal support for the welfare, safety, and employability of Filipino seafarers.
This time, the manning group responsible for deploying 160,000 seafarers has proposed a new tack while addressing the same concerns of relaxing the 2,000-person cap in inbound passengers and providing additional hotel rooms for quarantine, to facilitate return of the country’s beleaguered seafarers.
Specifically, ALMA is echoing the manning industry’s call to extend the spirit of the Philippine Green Lane to returning seafarers.
The Green Lane was adopted to ensure unhampered but safe movement of seafarers up for deployment overseas.
This time, the ALMA Maritime Group’s appeal for the Green Lane is “to facilitate the return of our Filipino seafarers to our home country.”
The group requested the following:
1. That the Philippine authorities automatically accept returning Filipino seafarers even if beyond the passenger seat limits currently imposed. In short, we seek to exempt the Filipino seafarers from the passenger limits without a need for a specific exemption per case.
2. That the Philippine authorities direct the airlines to honor the Filipino seafarers’ marine fare to become cheaper compared to the normal booking rates and fully flexible to changes with zero to minimal rebooking charges.
Moreover, ALMA Maritime Group has requested an audience with Duterte and other concerned parties to discuss further its proposals and draw action in coordination with the Office of the President.
Currently, most international flight seats are randomly canceled by airlines due to these passenger limits, leaving seafarers either extending their tenure onboard or stranded abroad waiting for weeks for Philippine flights to become available.
The current cost of international flights to the Philippines ranges from around USD1,500 to USD 4,500 per person. The cost itself is four-fold the monthly wage of a regular seafarer, ALMA reasoned.
It is a known practice in airline travel that seafarers are given a special “marine fare” rate. The airlines are given proof that the traveler is an active seafarer, so they issue tickets for them classed as marine fare.
“Unfortunately, our Filipino seafarers no longer enjoy the marine fare given their restrictions in returning home,” the group said.
Due to this limited and/or canceled international flights seats, crew change becomes further challenging to arrange.
“We underscore that this problem is unique to Filipino seafarers; our seafarers of other nationalities have no limitation in going home or no risk of being stranded in transit to their home countries which heightens their risk to COVID-19 exposure,” it said.
“In our maritime operations, we are the only country in the world that bans its own nationals from returning,” the ALMA Maritime Group added.
What’s worse, due to this limitation, many shipowners—to avoid significant additional costs—are now shifting to non-Filipino seafarers, which results in lost job opportunities for Pinoy “marinos.”