The illegal practice of charging seafarers recruitment fees to secure work is widespread but goes mostly unreported, a new study shows.
More than two-thirds of seafarers who said they experienced illegal or unethical violations of their workers’ rights were either charged recruitment fees or were victims of fake job offers after making advance payments.
However, the majority of seafarers (71%) did not report the abuse, in most cases because they did not know where or how to report it.
