Philippines warns agencies not to send seamen to Persian Gulf

The Philippines is telling crewing agencies to stop sending its nationals to the Persian Gulf, according to people familiar with the matter, making it more difficult for shipowners to rotate the thousands of seamen stuck on vessels behind the Strait of Hormuz.

The Southeast Asian nation has issued advisories in recent days via the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) telling agencies not to send Filipino crew to war zones such as the gulf to replace other seafarers there, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive information.

Manila’s move follows a directive by major international labor groups to designate the areas around the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman as a warlike operations area. That gives crew additional rights, including receiving more pay, the power to refuse transit through the strait, and higher compensation for death and disability.

The war-zone designation implies that the country’s seafarers must be replaced by non-Filipinos, and agencies that disregard this may lose their license to recruit from the nation in the future, said the people. Some crewing agencies have already told shipowners that they won’t be recruiting Filipinos for rotations, they said.

The DMW did not immediately respond to an email and text messages seeking comment.

With nearly 590,000 seafarers globally, the Philippines is the biggest source of mariners in the world. The nation had around 6,400 seamen in the Middle East in the early days of the war, the DMW estimates, out of what the International Maritime Organization says is a total of more than 20,000. Some of those may have since been repatriated.

The Philippines advisories will make it a lot tougher to replace seafarers that want to leave. Some mariners have requested to end their contracts early, while others are asking not to renew them when they run out, the people said. A small number of workers whose contracts have expired have already left ships.

Idling vessels still need a minimum number of crew to keep them operational and ready to sail out of the area when conditions allow. But the two-month old war and the double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz mean increasing numbers of seamen will soon come to the end of their contracts. The on-again, off again nature of the peace talks and the lack of clarity on when the conflict might end make the shipowners’ task even harder, and risk a humanitarian disaster if crew can’t be rotated.

The IMO, meanwhile, said last week it was working on an evacuation plan for ships stuck in the Persian Gulf, but warned it could only be put into action when there clear signs of de-escalation.

“This is about the seafarers. This is about the people,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said last week. “Because if we actually start looking into the cargo, the values, the commodities, et cetera, then this is not going to work. The decision of the council was very clear. It’s a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the seafarers from the region.” — Bloomberg