Make it easy for shipowners to pick up/let off seafarers

How can government ensure more overseas job placements for 490,000 Filipino seafarers? How can it lower their costs of boarding and debarking at international ports?

Here’s a quick way. Slash the atrociously high port rates for international ships to enter domestic harbors. That will encourage foreign shipowners to pick up and let off seamen in Philippine ports.

Once that’s done, seamen no longer will have to fly to and from Europe and the Americas to start or end nine-month shipboard stints. They can do it in Manila, Subic, Laoag, Batangas, Puerto Princesa, Legazpi, Cebu, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro or Davao.

Boarding or debarking per seafarer cost hundreds of thousands of pesos. It includes roundtrip international airfare, hotel bookings, transfers and food. Upright shipowners absorb such costs. Shabby ones tacitly deduct the amounts from seamen’s pay.

Foreign shipowners and seamen will save such sums if picked up and dropped off in the Philippines. Former foreign secretary Teddyboy Locsin already fixed the process during the pandemic lockdowns.

At that time paranoid countries barred foreign vessels from entering seaports. Others required long COVID-19 testing for crewmen. Shipboard stints of Filipinos, the majority of international seafarers, were over-extended to 18 months. Meanwhile, countless replacement countrymen could not board because prohibited from landing in foreign seaports.

Despite circuitous treaties, Locsin swiftly arranged for Philippine stopovers of international vessels. Crisis abated.

Then came put-offs. Rent-seekers reinvaded the ports post-pandemic.

Example is what was reported in this column. One of the world’s most modern and equipped foreign ships was charged P500,000 to be towed into and out of La Union Harbor last March 31, 2023.

Strictly speaking, M/V Fugro Equator did not need any towing service. It can adroitly maneuver in and out of harbors, and simultaneously tow several submerged equipment.

M/V Fugro Equator did not even have to berth in La Union. It was in Luzon waters to search for a sunken World War II wreckage. To resupply, it could have accommodated choppers or speedboats while offshore.

But then, 19 Filipino crewmen were to