By Carlos H. Conde
Published: December 9, 2008
International Herald Tribune
MANILA: Under the shade of the tall trees that line the sidewalk at Rizal Park, Marlon Arguelles scanned the job notices posted on the recruiting booths, a jumble of laser printouts marked with huge U.S. dollar signs.
Rizal, just off Manila Bay, is where Filipino sailors go seeking the best job offers, and where recruiters bid for the best sailors. On any given day, between 700 and 1,000 Filipino men try their luck in this sailors’ market.
There has always been an element of risk in the seafaring life, but these days, with piracy resurgent off the Horn of Africa, the dangers have seldom been more glaring. Nevertheless, in the Philippines, whose citizens make up nearly a third of the world’s commercial sailors, economic considerations trump concerns for personal safety. Recruiters say they’ve seen little falloff in demand for jobs on even the most dangerous routes.
Arguelles, 28, was looking for a job as a ship’s cook. Many of the agencies were offering between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for the position. But he said he needed more money than that to help care for his mother, who suffers from hypertension.
And so he was interested when he heard that one recruiter was looking for crewmen for an oil tanker that would pass through the Gulf of Aden. According to the International Maritime Bureau, 63 of the 199 incidents of piracy or attempted piracy that were reported worldwide from January to September occurred in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia.
“I know it’s dangerous but the agency is offering twice the salary,” said Arguelles, who sometimes helps out in his parents’ shop back home in Quezon, in the northern Philippines. “Besides, think about it: the pirates haven’t killed any crew members so far, so it could be harmless.”
Indeed, according to reports of some Filipino sailors who were freed late last month by Somali pirates, it could even be fun. The all-Filipino crew of the Greek-owned tanker Centauri, which was hijacked in September, told news agencies that the pirates treated them well, even playing cards with them and sharing meals.
Arguelles was in the park less than 15 minutes before a man in a white nautical uniform, carrying a sign advertising jobs, sidled up to him and spoke a few words. Arguelles nodded and, with a broad smile, walked away with the recruiter.
In late November, 134 of about 300 sailors held captive by Somali pirates were Filipinos, according to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. Twenty-six of them were from the Centauri. The other 108, taken captive while aboard a total of seven ships, are still in the hands of the pirates.
While some legislators in the Philippines have called for restrictions on the maritime recruiting market, Salvador Santos, assistant general manager of the Luneta Seafarer’s Center, a private organization that offers counseling and other assistance to sailors and is located next to the recruiting booths, said he did not think the men were being exploited.
“It’s up to the sailor whether to accept the offer,” Santos said. “The important thing is he knows what he’s getting into.”
News reports of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden apparently had not deterred sailors from seeking jobs on oil tankers and other commercial ships.
“We haven’t seen any change in the number of people who come here,” Santos said. “On the contrary, perhaps because of what is happening in Somalia, we’ve heard that more sailors are seeking to be deployed there because the money is good.”
A sailor who boards a ship bound for Somali waters gets double pay plus hazard pay, Santos said. That could mean more than $3,000 a month for a cook, more than a minimum wage-earner in the Philippines would make in a year.
What compels sailors like Arguelles to sign up despite the risk is not thrill-seeking or adventure, but the same motive that drives so many Filipinos to seek employment overseas: the responsibility of caring for families back home, Santos said. In the case of Arguelles, he hopes to cover not just his mother’s medical expenses, but his three younger siblings’ education.
Arguelles said he had always wanted to be a teacher, but teaching is one of the lowest-paid jobs in the Philippines.
“One hundred thousand pesos,” or about $2,000 – roughly the monthly wage on a non-Somalia bound ship – “is a lot of money for a single man like me,” Arguelles explained. “But I didn’t become a sailor because I wanted to sail. It’s because that’s what would provide us the money and it’s what many of my relatives have been doing.”
Amid the global economic crisis, the government continues to pin its hopes on the more than eight million overseas Philippine workers who send back remittances equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration says that 30 percent of the world’s merchant sailors, about 270,000, are Filipinos. They are likely to continue to find themselves in pirate-threatened waters for some time to come.
“The Philippine government is doing its best to protect its sailors, whom we consider heroes,” said Crescente Relacion, executive director of the Office of Migrant Workers Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs. “We are in constant communication with the ship owners, with foreign authorities and with the families of the sailors who remain in captivity.”
Santos, of the Luneta Seafarer’s Center, said it should not surprise anyone that Filipino sailors are enthusiastic about sailing despite the dangers.
“Given how hard it is to find a job in the Philippines that pays as much as a sailor would get abroad, I think it’s not surprising that sailors would take some risks,” he said.
Santos noted that Filipino workers have even smuggled themselves into war-torn Iraq because of the high pay offered there.
“About the only thing we can do,” Santos added, “is make sure that the sailor’s needs are met and he is equipped with all the knowledge and information he must know before he embarks on a dangerous assignment.”
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