Dear Editor,
Out of curiosity I visited a cruise ship office in Georgetown that’s hiring and is also advertising in a daily newspaper. I met with a young lady and she showed me her Guyana Business Registration, a cruise ship brochure and details about job offers in the cruise line industry. You are required to pay $15,000 dollars to process your documents which are then sent to Miami. The documents are: a photocopy of your passport, certificates, resumé and a valid police clearance. When you have presented all of your documents along with the money, she will notify you by a letter in the next two to three months informing you whether you have been hired or not.
First of all, Guyana is not listed as having official hiring partners to hire anyone to work on the cruise ships, and there’s no legitimate office presently. There was one in New Market Street which went by the name of Geico, but they no longer exist. Secondly, to recruit anyone, you must have an Approved Licence Recruitment Certificate with a seal.
One of the most important guidelines when looking for employment on a cruise ship is that you should never pay a fee in order to find a job. In fact, according to the International Transport Workers Federa-tion of Seafarers (www.itfseafarers.org), requesting advance payment for work on ships is prohibited under international maritime conventions.
It’s good to visit the different cruise companies’ job sites to verify if a company is legit and associated or not
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
