Likely drowned out by the lives, posts, and hoopla from back-to-back senatorial campaigns the past week is senior reporter Lian Buan’s story on Filipino seafarers — and the fact that we have been on the list of five most abandoned nationalities in the last five years. Last year, 273 Filipino seafarers called for help for either being unpaid for at least two months, being left behind at sea without maintenance or support, or not having been repatriated despite their need for it.
This strikes close to the hearts of Filipino families. An archipelagic country, the Philippines is the world’s leading supplier of seafarers, such that one in every four seafarers globally is a Filipino. At any given time, we deploy about half a million of our kababayans to the biggest ships navigating the deepest seas. The risks they face go beyond being duped by unscrupulous employers — they get kidnapped or killed by marauding terrorists.