News & articles

A new joint study by ISWAN and Gujarat Maritime University examines the under-researched issue of fraudulent recruitment in India and the steps that can be taken to provide safer routes into a seafaring career. 

Despite substantial provision in the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) to protect seafarers against exploitation, the illegal recruitment of seafarers remains a significant challenge in major seafarer-supply nations around the world.  India, home to around a quarter of a million seafarers, is no exception. [1] In recent years, ISWAN has been working with India’s Directorate General of Shipping (DG Shipping) and other key maritime stakeholders to raise awareness about the risks that seafarers face when they pay fees to fraudulent agents, both through delivering training to cadets and ratings as part of our Seafarers Education and Awareness Sessions (SEAS) and through a series of campaign videos. 

Since the launch of the campaign in 2018, ISWAN’s SeafarerHelp officers and our team in India have supported over 1,000 seafarers who have been exploited by fraudulent agents, making us acutely aware of the devastating consequences of recruitment fraud for both seafarers and their families. Frequently, seafarers contact ISWAN having paid a service charge to secure employment, only to find that their agent has disappeared without the promised job materialising. This leaves many seafarers in serious financial difficulties, particularly as they have often borrowed money to pay their agent’s service charge. The emotional and financial stress of fraudulent recruitment can also have a severe impact on the seafarer’s family, who have in many cases made tremendous sacrifices to support their career aspirations in the hope that it will provide a route to a better life.  

Even more concerningly, ISWAN has assisted seafarers who have paid service charges, only to be placed in situations that pose very real threats to their safety. Many find themselves working on unseaworthy vessels, often without pay, or lacking basic provisions. Already indebted from paying their agent’s fee, seafarers may be unable to afford to travel back to India and risk becoming trapped in conditions that are at times tantamount to modern slavery. Those that take up roles via unlicensed agents are particularly vulnerable, as they are unable to access the legal rights to financial support in case of abandonment that are guaranteed under the Seafarer’s Employment Agreement. Furthermore, they cannot lodge complaints through India’s shipping ministry, DG Shipping, which only has a remit to address fraudulent practices by agents that hold a valid licence. Indeed, the lack of routes into safe employment has been cited as a key reason why more Indian seafarers experience abandonment overseas than seafarers of any other nationality.  

As a result of the severe impact of recruitment fraud on many Indian seafarers, ISWAN partnered with Gujarat Maritime University (GMU) to carry out a study to better understand the nature of illegal recruitment practices in India and to identify the scope to strengthen legal protections for seafarers. The research, which was published last week, casts light on some of the key structural issues that facilitate the operation of illegal recruitment activities, as well as making recommendations about the steps that both the Indian government and international bodies can take to better protect seafarers from exploitation.  

The study pinpoints some of the systemic factors that are currently enabling fraudulent agents to thrive. One key issue is the lack of mandate for DG Shipping to take action against agents that operate without a valid licence, a regulatory gap that allows many unlicensed agencies to prosper unsanctioned. Another vital step is improved education to ensure that seafarers understand the risks that fraudulent agents pose and are aware of safer alternatives, such as the International Transport Workers’ Federation’s (ITF) ITFShipBeSure tool, which assists seafarers to identify reputable agents and to avoid those who are known to have engaged in exploitative practices. 

However, to make real headway in tackling the problem of illegal recruitment, the Indian government would also need to address the current oversupply of inexperienced seafarers and the mismatch between their levels of training and experience and the requirements of reputable maritime employers.  

GMU and ISWAN’s research indicates that the vast majority of seafarers who become victims of recruitment fraud in India are young, lacking in sea time and often from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. At present, it is possible to qualify as a seafarer in India by completing four basic Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) courses. However, most employers require more advanced qualifications and more substantial sea time, leaving large numbers of aspiring seafarers without legitimate routes into employment and creating ideal conditions in which fraudulent agents can prosper. Seafarers lacking sea-going experience frequently stress to ISWAN’s helpline officers their desperation to find work and the impossibility of doing so without going through agents that charge illegal fees.  

Addressing this lack of alignment between India’s maritime training and qualification frameworks and the entry requirements for junior roles at sea would be a key step towards reducing the stranglehold of illegal recruitment agencies over many aspiring Indian seafarers. Tackling this bottleneck could also provide a key to addressing another major challenge that the shipping industry faces:  the increasingly serious recruitment and retention crisis. [2] Alarming statistics about the dearth of officers are rarely discussed in the same breath as the large number of aspiring seafarers who are taking often desperate measures to gain a foothold in the industry. It is evident that in India there is no shortage of young people who are keen to work at sea.  

GMU and ISWAN’s report sets out a series of recommendations that the Indian maritime administration and other key stakeholders could adopt in order to create more transparent and accessible pathways for newly qualified seafarers to progress from completing their training to securing employment at sea. Taking concrete steps to make the recruitment process safer would be a huge step forwards in protecting seafarers from the very real dangers – financial, physical and psychological – that illegal recruitment can pose. Furthermore, with the right support to build their experience and develop their careers, these young people could also help to ensure that the shipping industry has the skilled professionals that it needs to thrive.  

The impact of recruitment fraud on Indian seafarers: A joint study by GMU and ISWAN can be downloaded here.

[1]  See, for example, two 2023 studies – one by  Liverpool John Moores University and the Mission to Seafarers and the second by the Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) and the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) – which examine the prevalence and impact of fraudulent recruitment in different parts of the world. Both point to the high levels of illegal recruitment activities in India. 

[2] See, for example, Drewry’s Manning Annual Review and Forecast report, which estimates that the officer availability gap increased to 9% in 2023, up from a 5% shortfall in 2022.