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ALARMED
Foreign Affairs department officials are urgently asking
the Labor department to approve its proposal to require
international shipping industries and employment
agencies to formally agree they will not require their
Filipino crews to be on ships that pass the
pirate-infested waters of Somalia and Nigeria.
This
developed with reports that hostaged Filipino seamen
have already reached 54 on Wednesday—in only three
weeks—following the latest pirate raid of a cargo ship,
the Hong Kong-flagged ship MT Stolt Valor, in those
African waters during which they seized two more
Filipino seamen.
Undersecretary for migrant workers affairs Esteban
Conejos Jr. said, “All crewmembers are reported to be
unharmed. The DFA has instructed the
Philippine embassy in Nairobi and the consulate general
in Hong Kong to coordinate efforts to secure the safe
release of the crew members with ship owners and
international maritime authorities.”
In a
related issue, the country continued to rigidly maintain
its ban on sending Filipino workers to Iraq and Nigeria
in the face of intense lobbying. Also out of bounds to
workers are Afghanistan and Lebanon.
“There
is strong lobbying from the Nigerian government
insisting that the kidnappings only happen in isolated
areas,” said Conejos. “But it is difficult to segregate
so we insist on imposing a ban on the deployment of
workers there.”
He said
Filipino workers in Iraq have now reached an estimated
6,000 persons, a rise of 2,000 from before the ban, even
with the ban in place because of the strong lure of
much-higher pay.
“There
are no new entrants to Iraq [from the Philippines] since
the imposition of the ban. However many Filipino truck
drivers, most of them coming from Kuwait, get hired by
the US military to drive fuel tankers,” said Conejos. |
