The Philippine Overseas Employment Administrator is having a hard time identifying the six Filipino seamen snatched on Saturday from a cargo ship in Nigeria�s Upper Niger Delta.
�We have no clear identity yet even of the ships because what was listed to us are just Baco 1, Baco 2 and Baco 3,” POEA administrator Rosalinda Baldoz said.
Baldoz however assured that her officer has been closely coordinating with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the seafarers� placement agency, Philharmonia, not only to be able to identify them but also to ensure their safety.
The abduction of the six Filipino crewmen of a cargo ship operated by Germany’s Baco Liner 1 has brought to nine the number of foreign workers being held hostage in the world’s 8th largest oil exporter, where militant attacks have reduced oil output by 20 percent.
The Filipinos were taken off a vessel in Chanomi creek in Delta States cargo ship that runs between Europe and several ports across West Africa.
The ship, headed for the port of Warri, had 14 crew members but only the six Filipinos were taken.
Eduardo Malaya, spokesman of the Department of Foreign Affairs, said the embassy in Nigeria had already sent two officials to Warri, capital of Delta States, where the abducted Filipinos wre reportedly taken after they were snatched in Uppder Niger Delta, and work out plans for their safe release.
More than 2,000 Filipinos have left the country for Nigeria since 2003, Baldoz noted.
The government has suspended the deployment of Filipino workers to Nigeria following the abduction.
According to Labor Secretary Arturo Brion, the suspension was just temporary as a result of the incidents of kidnapping and the political tension in Nigeria.
The suspension, he said, covered processing of contracts and deployment of all land and sea-based workers bound for Nigeria.
Brion communicated the suspension order to all agencies attached to the labor department, and reminded them to pass on the information to the manning and recruitment agencies processing deployment documents.
The labor chief also instructed all Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLOs) to inform Filipinos in their respective areas of the deployment ban to Nigeria.
source: GMANews.TV