MANILA, 29 May — Thousands of Filipino seafarers face the prospect of losing their jobs for failing to comply with international standards required by maritime organizations, an official of a seafarers’ union warned yesterday. “This is a real threat in the industry,” Nelson P. Ramirez, president of the 35,000-strong United Filipino Seafarers (UFS), said in a statement sent to yesterday.
Ramirez said the problem stemmed from the failure of maritime schools in the country to comply with the standards imposed by the International Maritime Organization for upgrading skills provided under the Standard of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping.
He said the IMO first imposed a Jan. 1 deadline, but it was pushed to July 1st upon request by the seafarers’ groups. But even with the extension, Ramirez doubts if the Filipino seamen can meet the deadline.
He said at the moment, thousands of Chinese seafarers are waiting to replace the Filipino seafarers, who supply 27 percent of the labor force in ships overseas.
“These are serious enough concerns that labor officials should attend to instead of flexing their muscles and washing their dirty linens in public,” Ramirez noted, referring to the word war between Labor and Employment Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) chief Wilhelm D. Soriano.
Sto. Tomas had explained in forums with Filipino community leaders in Riyadh and Jeddah that the issue about the OWWA fund scandal ought to be brought out into the open because Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) should not be kept in the dark about what happened to their money.
According to a Commission on Audit report and an investigation by a team formed by Sto. Tomas, the OWWA may have lost some 1.2 billion pesos in investments not sanctioned by the agency’s Board of Trustees. Sto. Tomas, who chairs the board, had sought to stop the profligate spending of the overseas workers fund by the OWWA. She said she disapproved the OWWA’s proposed budget for this year because it was bigger than the agency’s collection of fees from OFWs. (Arabnews & INS)
