AFTER nearly three years, 22 Filipino fishermen and owners of fishing vessel MV Gem-Ver will finally receive compensation from the owner of a Chinese vessel that rammed and abandoned their boat near the Recto Bank in the West Philippine Sea in June 2019.
The fishermen, who were rescued by a Vietnamese vessel, and the boat’s owners will get P6 million in compensation, according to Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra.
He said “there has been a final settlement of the damage claims of the Gem-Ver fishermen against the owners of the Chinese vessel” and the P6-million settlement “is ready for implementation.”
The amount is half the P12 million that the fishermen and the DOJ estimated will cover repair expenses, lost income, wages of the crewmen, and moral damages.
Guevarra did not provide additional details such as when the fishermen and the owners of Gem-Ver will get the compensation and how much each of them would receive.
Justice Undersecretary Adrian Sugay said the Department of Foreign Affairs will issue a statement on the matter in the coming days.
In 2020, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said the DOJ will determine the damages due the Filipino fishermen because the boat belongs to a private company.
He also said the Philippines and China agreed that the Chinese vessel was at fault.
The settlement on the compensation was reached after a several rounds of negotiation and just months before the end of President Duterte’s term on June 30.
The incident that took place in the early morning hours of June 9, 2019 and the subsequent abandonment of the Filipino fishermen by the Chinese vessel in violation of international maritime laws, tested Duterte’s ties with Beijing and put in the spotlight his policy on dealing with Chinese activities in the West Philippine Sea in the South China Sea, which critics here and abroad said is a policy of appeasement.
Duterte was heavily criticized for downplaying the sinking which he said was just a “little maritime accident.”
