BY Bulatlat.com
Volume 3, Number 50
URL: http://www.bulatlat.com/news/3-50/3-50-newsglance.html

Migrante International, an alliance of overseas Filipino workers groups, has asked the Philippine government in a Jan. 22 statement to hold an independent and comprehensive investigation after the M/V Rocknes capsized last Jan. 19, entrapping 16 of th 24 Filipino seafarers on board.

Citing records from the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), Migrante said there had been 420 seafarers who died at sea from September 2002 to September 2003 alone.

Migrante said that despite the alarming statistics and other issues confronting seafarers, “the POEA Seafarers’ contract is filled with anti-seafarer provisions that inhibit the seafarers or their families ability to receive full compensation.” Among these is a new amendment that says once seafarers or their relatives obtain death and disability benefits, they cannot file other damages for negligence against a foreign ship.

The international group’s secretary general, Maita Santiago, denounced the provisions as “greater injustice to migrants and their families committed by their own Philippine government.”

Santiago added that in the case of MV Rocknes, “relatives and seafarers can do nothing in terms of pursuing them (MV Rocknes owners) for additional damages” if the owners were found liable for negligence. Bulatlat.com / Reposted by migrante_ksa

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