Manning group reiterates call for seamen exemption from travel cap

Manning group reiterates call for seamen exemption from travel cap
September 1, 2021 https://www.manilatimes.net/2021/09/01/business/maritime/manning-group-r...

Licensed manning agencies (LMAs) have elevated their appeal to President Rodrigo Duterte to help bring home thousands of fatigued Filipino seafarers, many of them serving beyond their contracts onboard international vessels.

The Association of Licensed Manning Agencies (ALMA Maritime Group) made an urgent appeal to the Chief Executive after its earlier letter, requesting an increase in inbound flight passenger limit as well as in quarantine facilities, which had fallen largely on deaf ears.

In their latest letter to the President, the ALMA Maritime Group, an 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 our 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 cap in inbound passengers and providing additional hotel rooms for quarantine purposes to facilitate the 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. It can be recalled that the Green Lane was adopted to ensure unhampered, but a 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, thus, requests 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, the group has requested an audience with the President along with other concerned parties to discuss further its proposals and draw action in coordination with the Office of the President.

As things stand now, most international flight seats are randomly canceled by the airline due to these passenger limits, leaving seafarers either extending tenure onboard or stranded abroad waiting for weeks or a month for Philippines flights to become available.

The current cost of international flights to the Philippines ranges at around USD 1,500.00 and peaks at USD 4,500.00 per person. The cost itself is four-fold the monthly wage of a regular seafarer. 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.

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 heighten their risk to Covid 19 exposure.

"In our maritime operations, we are the only country in the world that bans its nationals from returning," the ALMA Maritime Group reads.

What's worse, due to this limitation, many shipowners, to avoid significant additional costs, are now shifting to non-Filipino seafarers which results in loss of job opportunities to Filipino seafarers.

Hence, if the group's requests were not immediately acted upon, the country would continue to lose jobs for Filipino seafarers.