According to a survey conducted by the Apostleship of the Sea, the monthly salary of Filipino seafarers ranges between $400 to $3,000. The survey also showed that women, who work mostly as waitresses in cruise vessels, get as low as $50 a month, augmenting their meager salaries with tips given by passengers. The trend among recruiters therefore is to employ more female than male waiters, who have higher rates.
Normally, seamen retire early, at around 40 years of age, while senior officers take their leave from the sea at 45. Globally, shipping companies impose an age limit in hiring to ensure that the seafarers are healthy and physically fit, and they can save on medical costs.
On retirement, seafarers find work in seafarer manning agencies or as instructors in training and maritime schools. Some establish their own maritime schools in their hometowns, but others leave the seafaring life behind and open their own small businesses with their savings and pension.
But not everyone ends up this way. After 33 years of seafaring, a Cebuano chief engineer returned to an empty house. His wife had left him, his four children, whose schooling he financed while at sea, were married with lives of their own-- two worked in the United States, the other two in Cebu City.
Today he lives alone in a small house, moving about in a wheel chair, having lost one of his legs in an accident on his last voyage. His only source of funds is his pension, which hardly keeps him above water. Sometimes, his daughter in Cebu sends him money.
There are those who are even less lucky. Two years ago, avessel with a 16-man Filipino crew disappeared. It was last sighted in the China Sea, between China and Taiwan. No wreck was found, not even isolated debris or a tell-tale corpse, as if the vessel and its men were swallowed by a sea monster. Although the families of the missing seamen received $50,000 each as compensation, they continue to hope for the return of their sons, husbands and fathers.
3 comments:
I can not completely blame why a need for most of Filipinos go overseas because of abject poverty because even I myself experienced sailing but it has so many positive yield in making my family liberate from financial difficulty however, in most cases, I've seen so many dysfunctional families because of mishandled long distance love affair especially coping up on the pangs of loneliness.
May I suggest that prior embarkation of crew... there should be seminar and a speaker about the 'ONBOARD REALITY" so that the seaman and the corresponding family can work and help together so that they could seek help in time of distraught or even preventive measure not to make it happen. I can be of help if you need counselling...
Time and again that during my final briefing with our seafarer, I am always telling them to love their work and the hard earned money an to invest in the future. Seafaring is not a lifetime profession, we are only good until we are healthy and employer still like us. Some people caught with age and retired from the profession with no nothing left from their earnings. It sad to say but it is happening to many and will go on until seafarer were not educated on the real essence of the seafaring profession.
I've been thinking to be a seafarer someday to be able to finance our needs at home. Though I know that this will be really hard, I really want to try it because it will really give me enough money to compensate our needs but reading this sad reality that being a seafarer creates a dysfunctional family makes me feel sad. I really happy that I have friends going aboard from PNTC maritime schools in the philippines..
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