Help we can extend to our Filipino seafarers

Dear InterManager member

You could help your Filipino Crew – allow for 5 min telephone call, so they can check whether their loved ones are OK?
Do you think you could do it?

Shipowner groups, unions, and welfare organisations are pulling together in response to the devastating effects of Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines.
One of the main concerns is for Filipino seafarers, who represent over 20% of the world’s seafarers, to be able to contact their families and loved ones back home. Already, the Mission to Seafarers and Sailors Society are providing free phone cards, sims, and wifi to Filipino seafarers who visit their centres all over the world.
The Seafarers’ Emergency Fund, administered by ISWAN, is providing funds for seafarer centres around the world to facilitate free phone calls and wifi for Filipino seafarers to call back home.
ISWAN is helping to co-ordinate the response from organisations involved in seafarers’ welfare such as the International Shipping Federation (ISF), the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and the International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA).
The following online resources are available for organisations and seafarers who need further information :
• People finder service via Google – http://google.org/personfinder/2013-yolanda/
• Free telephone calls to landlines/mobiles from the Philippines with viber http://viber.com/typhoon
• Reliable sources of news – http://mashable.com/2013/11/09/typhoon-haiyan-philippines-2/
• Crisis map of the disaster – http://google.org/crisismap/a/gmail.com/TyphoonYolanda
• Alert Net – used by disaster relief organisations – http://www.trust.org/item/20131111103501-zcekl/?source=hpagehead
• Philippine Red Cross family tracing service – +63 (0)9179519711, + 63 (0)9154940415 FREE

Among the initiatives already being implemented include :
• The ITF affiliate Filipino union AMOSUP using their training ship, the Felix Oca, to transport humanitarian supplies provided by Norwegian shipowners and others to the affected areas
• The shipping company MOL donating US$30,000 to the relief effort
• KVH’s Headland Media using their daily news bulletin, Newslink, to provide information on the typhoon and aftermath to their 100,000 Filipino seafarer readers on board 10,000 ships all over the world.
• ISWAN is also helping to share information and provide a service to seafarers, via their SeafarerHelp free helpline, who are concerned about their families back home in the Philippines. SeafarerHelp will have Tagalog speakers available.
• Seafarer welfare organisations and missions have also put their chaplains and welfare workers on alert to cope with Filipino seafarers who receive tragic news while at sea or in port.
Companies wishing to donate to the Seafarers Emergency Fund to provide free communications for Filipino seafarers away from home should email [email protected] This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or phone +44 (0) 300 012 4279 FREE
Individual wishing to donate can do so via the Mission to Seafarers or Sailors Society.

Message from InterManager’s President
“One of the world’s most powerful typhoons ever recorded, code named Haiyan, hit the Visayas region on Friday, Nov. 8, with devastating effects and left untold damage across many central Philippine provinces.
Aside from catastrophic wind, deadly storm surges were reported along Haiyan’s path inundating many coastal cities and towns just like a tsunami. The provinces hardest by the storm’s wind field were: Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Iloilo, Aklan, Antique, Mindoro and Palawan, destroying homes, roadways, toppling power lines and communications towers, and even severely impacting evacuation centers and hospitals.
The Philippine national government, together with the International Red Cross and other United Nations relief agencies are fast tracking the delivery of emergency services to a wide area of affected cities and towns across the entire central part of the country.
The immediate efforts are concentrated on providing first response medical attention and engineering support to provide basic services where possible; distribution of relief goods – water, food, clothing, and temporary shelter, while also restoring basic calm and security and minimizing any security related threats which can easily arise in such desperate situations. Eventually, however, the more involved support will likely be devoted to rebuilding homes and communities, including the lives of affected families who may have suffered unfortunate casualties.
PTC is in the process of organizing emergency teams with satellite phones and will be dispatching them shortly to key cities in order to try and re-establish contact and assist in any way possible in coordination with the massive relief efforts now underway. While cellular and land based telephone lines are still unavailable, we intend to take advantage of any surviving radio stations to broadcast messages across the identified provinces, and hope to use the satellite phone system to link our head office with our teams. Where we can do so, we will try and arrange a link up to crewmembers currently onshore, as well as, a linkup for family members to crew deployed globally, as best and as fast as possible.
At this time of unprecedented destruction and loss of human lives, we humbly reach out to you to consider joining PTC in providing any form of assistance possible as we assemble basic necessities such as food, water, hygiene products, mats, mosquito nets and first aid medical supplies, which are all essential at this time. If you can consider any cash donations towards this effort, we will be most obliged and will consolidate all such assistance into an emergency fund to help fuel all the above mentioned activities.
We will keep you posted on the progress of the emergency assistance initiatives. Meanwhile, thank you again for your concern, thoughts and prayers for our affected countrymen, most especially to crewmembers and their families. Our deepest gratitude for any assistance that you may find appropriate and possible to provide at this time of great need.”
Gerardo Borromeo, InterManager President

Please also check:

Let’s Do All We Can To Help Filipino Colleagues

Brgds
Kuba

Capt. Kuba Szymanski
Secretary General
InterManager

+44 7624 498 266
web: www.intermanager.org

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