Friday, August 29, 2008
The DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Esteban Conejos Jr. made the proposal during an inter-agency meeting with the Department of Labor and Employment, Office of the Vice-President, and four manning agencies of shipping vessels with Filipino crew hijacked in Somalia.
Aside from the deployment ban, the DFA said "Filipino crew by their contract should not be allowed to be on ships vulnerable to pirates and raiders" as what has happened in Somalia.
The DFA also suggested that Filipino crew be "restricted, by contract, to the safe sea lanes identified and certified by the Coalition of Naval Forces operating in the area."
In the same meeting, Conejos also proposed to increase the minimum age requirement in the deployment of household domestic workers overseas from 23 to 30 years old.
Conejos said this is "to ensure that they are emotionally and mentally prepared to face the challenges posed by employment abroad."
Conejos had earlier suggested a "psychiatric" test on overseas-bound household workers to see if they can stand the stress, trauma, and abuse that some domestic helpers have experienced, especially in the Middle East. But the proposal was strongly opposed by migrant and labor groups.
The Department of Labor and Employment is considering these new proposals of the DFA.
Last Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo said the government was looking at ways to keep its sailors out of dangerous waters following abductions off Somalia and Nigeria.
Romulo said Filipinos are already banned from working in dangerous countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, although some manage to slip in without government consent.
"It's time for us to propose ways that the sea-based workers not go to dangerous areas," he said.
Romulo made the suggestion before the owner of a Malaysian tanker seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia last week announced that a Filipino crew member had died.
He did not specify how such a rule could be imposed on Filipinos, who form the backbone of the world's merchant seamen.
Many work on vessels that pass through the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia, where recent abductions have taken place.
The waters off Somalia and Nigeria are the most pirate-infested in the world, with the International Maritime Bureau reporting 24 attacks in Somalia and 18 in Nigeria between April and June this year.
Last Thursday, three more ships -- German, Iranian and Japanese -- were hijacked off the Somali coast. Seven ships have been menaced in the Gulf of Aden in the past month. -- with reports from Agence France-Presse