Philippines Sees Its Seafarer Deployment Recovering To Pre-Pandemic Levels By 2023 End

Philippines Sees Its Seafarer Deployment Recovering To Pre-Pandemic Levels By 2023 End
MI News Network June 27, 2023 https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/philippines-sees-its-seafare...

The Philippines, one of the world’s top suppliers of maritime labor, expects its seafarer deployment to recover to the pre-pandemic level by year-end.

On Monday, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) predicted that the Filipino seafarer deployment would return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2023.

From January until March, during the first three months of the year, the deployment is 149,000. So projection-wise, by the end of 2023, we will likely witness pre-pandemic levels, per Secretary of Migrant Workers Susan Ople.

In an ambush interview conducted at the Seafarer 2050 Summit held in Pasay City, the secretary provided these figures.

In 2020, the deployment of Filipino employees dropped to 270,000 back in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, she recalled.

Then, the Philippines had measly recovered to the usual deployment figures in 2022.

As of 2022, the whole year, the pre-pandemic number was almost breached. There was a shortage of 15,000 in 2022. The deployment was at 489,852 Filipino seafarers.

Ople further added that over 505,000 seafarers left the nation in 2019.

This indicated that there was one Filipino in every five-people international crew. In October last year, 50,000 seafarers had earlier been at the risk of losing jobs.

The European Union had been planning on banning employees from the Philippines. It stated that Filipinos’ training was not meeting its standards. However, the prohibition continued after the Philippines complied with the necessary training needs.