MARINO Partylist urges the Department of Health (DOH) to allocate more vaccines on Local Government Units with seafarers’ hubs and dormitories following the Inter-Agency Task Force’s (IATF) decision to reclassify outbound Overseas Filipino Workers, including seafarers, from A4 to A1 in the priority list of the government’s ResBakuna program under IATF Resolution 117 on May 27, 2021.
“We appreciate IATF for responding to our call of giving priority to our departing OFWs, especially Filipino seafarers, because we believe that they are essential in the country’s, and the world’s, economic recovery. However, the main struggle is the availability of vaccines in areas with higher concentration of seafarers,” said MARINO Party-list First Representative Sandro Gonzalez.
The partylist has been active in pushing for the prioritization of Filipino seafarers, with Rep. Gonzalez directly writing a letter to Pres. Rodrigo Duterte to expedite their vaccination after learning that several LGUs give precedence to their constituents and leaving transient seafarers behind.
“Once DOH provides additional vaccines that are solely allotted for seafarers, we anticipate that it will help resolve the issue on the distribution of vaccines among residents and migrant workers. We should be reminded that foreign companies prefer vaccinated workers and some other countries only favor specific brands of vaccines,” MARINO Partylist Second Representative Macnell Lusotan said.
IATF Resolution 117 covers OFWs whose deployment is scheduled within the next four months from the intended date of their vaccination.
MARINO is also supportive of providing single-dose vaccines to Pinoy seafarers as soon as they are available since schedules in the shipping industry varies from time to time and short-notice deployments are possible. “With this movement in their priority status, we are hopeful that more Filipino seafarers will be deployed this year. As of now, we will make use of the available vaccines that we have because our focus is to get them vaccinated immediately, but once the single-dose vaccines are available, we highly encourage the government to prioritize it for our seafarers,” Rep. Gonzalez added.
