Japan shippers support Filipino seafarers - DOLE

The Japanese Shipowners' Association would continue hiring and training Filipino seafarers — a move the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said would boost President Benigno Aquino III's plan to support and protect sea-based workers. In a statement on Friday, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said Japanese Shipowners’ Association (JSA) president Koji Miyahara told her in a courtesy call that Japanese ship owners will continue helping Filipino seafarers and protect them from pirates. “Mr. Miyahara has expressed the continuing support of the JSA to the Philippines. He said JSA members will continue to employ Filipino seafarers in the next several years," said Baldoz. "He also gave us the assurance that the JSA continues to support the government of Japan’s cooperative efforts with the Philippine government in protecting seafarers against piracy," she added said. Japan is one of the biggest employers of Filipino seafarers and the JSA is Japan's largest association of shipowners with over 100 member companies. The association is working closely with Philippine manning agencies in recruiting and deploying thousands of Filipino maritime workers, according to Baldoz. Mihayara told Baldoz that Japan would soon be floating more ocean-going vessels and recruit Filipino seafarers to man those large ships. Filipino seafarers have been victims of and piracy, especially in Somali waters. On July 5, the European Union's anti-piracy task force reported that at least 18 Filipinos were on board the chemical tanker MT Motivator that was hijacked by Somali pirates in the northern Bab-Al-Mandeb, the strait between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. The incident brought to 81 the number of Filipinos held captive by pirates, three on board the FV Tai Yuan 227, 19 on the MV Eleni P, one from the MV Iceberg 1, 19 on the MT Samho Dream, and 21 on the MV Voc Daisy, data released by the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department showed. “It is in the continuing employment of Filipino seafarers and their protection that the JSA and the DOLE will focus its modes of cooperation and I assured the JSA, through Mr. Mihayara, that I will convey this to President Aquino," Baldoz said. An estimated 256,000 Filipino seafarers are deployed annually. They accounted for 25 percent of the total deployment of overseas Filipino workers last year. —With Carmela G. Lapeña/Sophia Dedace/VS, GMANews.TV