The illegal practice of charging seafarers recruitment fees to secure work continues to be “current and endemic”, a new study shows, with shipping companies and cargo owners urged to take action.
Some 31% of the seafarers surveyed have been asked to pay a recruitment fee to get a job on board a merchant vessel, with 28% of those asked within the last eight months, despite being illegal under the Maritime Labour Convention.
“This illegal practice must end,” said the study’s co-publisher, the Institute for Human Rights & Business (IHRB).
“Shipping companies and cargo owners must be made aware of these malpractices and ensure that seafarers aboard vessels they are associated with are not victim to illegal recruitment fees.”
Although 26% of seafarers who were asked to pay a fee refused to do so, nearly three-quarters felt obliged to pay, the report found.
Francesca Fairbairn, who leads IHRB’s work on shipping and commodities, told TradeWinds: “It’s either a reflection of the desperation of seafarers for a job, or it’s a reflection of the fact that it’s just so normal that everyone is doing it.”
Some 80% of those asked to pay fees are also not reporting the incidents to authorities, which Fairbairn deemed “a worrying number”, with many unaware that this practice is illegal.
These were the main conclusions of Seafarers and Illegal Recruitment Fees 2024 Insights, published on World Maritime Day by the IHRB and ethical maritime recruitment platform, Turtle.
Isabelle Rickmers, chief executive and founder of Turtle, told TradeWinds: “[Paying illegal fees] is a main obstacle for seafarers, either to progress in their career or to enter this industry. It’s something that we cannot ignore.
“It didn’t happen years ago. A third of the corruptive demand requests actually happened this year. So, it’s really now. Seafarers basically say, ‘Well, that’s the way to do it in order to progress’.”
The survey comprised close to 2,627 seafarers between May 2024 and July 2024 and follows on from the significant attention received from their 2023 corruption survey.
Shocking quotes from individual seafarers included a second officer from Nigeria saying, “I felt betrayed by the maritime industry.”
A second engineer from Bangladesh said seafarers feel like hostages or slaves.
Fairbairn admitted: “There are some very shocking quotes in this report. … It tarnishes the whole of the industry.”
Across all ranks and vessels
The survey showed that instances of asking for illegal fees occurred across all ranks and vessel types. In 42% of cases, the seafarers were officers at the time they were asked to pay a fee, while in 18% of cases, they were cadets and in 43% were ratings.
“It was surprising and alarming, to find that officers, and even senior officers, are just as likely to pay those recruitment fees, or be asked to pay those recruitment fees, as are ratings,” said Fairbairn.
In terms of vessel type, 27% of cases involving fees were for jobs on board container ships, while 22% of cases were for offshore vessels.
“When you’re talking container ships, it’s tier one of their supply chain, therefore they have to stand up and take notice,” said Fairbairn.
The latest share of fee-charging cases were registered in India, followed by Ukraine, Nigeria, Philippines, Ghana and the UK.
“Yes, I was quite surprised by the UK. The only connection we can make is that recruitment scams are also an issue in the UK, which may tie in with illegal recruitment fees also,” Turtle’s Rickmers said.
Almost half of those who agreed to pay the fees would pay between $500 and $5,000. Some 45% of those paying $1,000 or more were from India. The majority did pay those fees in cash. However, some seafarers also reported being asked for gifts, unpaid apprenticeships and even sexual favours.
The report also found that three-quarters of those paying recruitment fees saw their mental health impacted as seafarers tried to deal with the financial burden, and the added stress possibly leading to unsafe working conditions on board ships.
“Seafarers are accumulating intolerable levels of debt in order to secure a position on board a ship … the resulting levels of debt are pushing many seafarers towards modern slavery conditions,” the report said.
Fairbairn added that some seafarers paid more than once, sometimes multiple times over their career.
“The mental health impacts of increasing debt are not insignificant, they are serious and leave seafarers rife for exploitation because they will do anything in order to get out of their debt,” she said.
When asked how much debt seafarers had accumulated over their career, 29% had accumulated up to $500 of debt to date, 41% between $500 and $5,000 and 15% over $5,000 worth of debt. The highest proportion, or 39%, of those paying $1,000 over their careers were from India.
Safety on board could also be put at risk as certificates and seafaring experience are “for sale”, and therefore priority is given to those who are prepared to pay the fee over the best candidates.
“If you are selling your job rather than giving it to the best applicant, you are already undermining the professionalism of your crew. You run that risk as a seafarer if you are essentially a market,” said Fairbairn.
Action needed
Since its previous findings in 2023, Fairbairn said that the IHRB had carried out “a lot of advocacy and awareness” work.
“But that is clearly not enough,” she said.
“We need to step up. We need to get shipping companies to step up. We need to get ship managers to step up, and we need to get those whose customers and clients are shipowners and operators to ensure that those companies are stepping up.”
Rickmers concurred.
“It’s illegal and that’s something that your company shouldn’t be involved with. So hopefully it will help them take action,” she said.
The report recommended priority actions for all relevant stakeholders. It said that shipping companies need to ensure that seafarers employed on board their ships have not been charged recruitment fees to secure their work contracts and create opportunities for seafarers to report incidents.
In addition, the report urged customers of shipping companies — including charterers, commodity companies and traders, and container cargo owners — to have a responsibility and carry out due diligence on this issue with their shipping suppliers.
“I don’t want to kind of put a black mark against all of the industry. But, if 31% of seafarers are being asked to pay a recruitment fee, then there can be very few ships and companies that are completely untouched by this problem, even if they think we are compliant with the Maritime Labour Convention,” Fairbairn concluded.
