4/9/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly accordance with the POEA-SEC. It is worthy to note that when petitioner executed an employment contract with respondents on July 21, 1999, it was the 1996 POEA-SEC, based on POEA Memorandum Circular No. 055-96,[27] that was applied, deemed written in and appended to his employment contract. Section 20(B) thereof states: The liabilities of the employer when the seafarer suffers injury or illness during the term of his contract are as follows: xxxx 2. If the injury or illness requires medical and/or dental treatment in a foreign port, the employer shall be liable for the full cost of such medical, serious dental, surgical and hospital treatment as well as board and lodging until the seafarer is declared fit to work or to be repatriated. However, if after repatriation, the seafarer still requires medical attention arising from said injury or illness, he shall be so provided at cost to the employer until such time he is declared fit or the degree of his disability has been established by the company-designated physician. 3. Upon sign-off from the vessel for medical treatment, the seafarer is entitled to sickness allowance equivalent to his basic wage until he is declared fit to work or the degree of permanent disability has been assessed by the company-designated physician, but in no case shall this period exceed one hundred twenty (120) days. For this purpose, the seafarer shall submit himself to a postemployment medical examination by a company-designated physician within three working days upon his return except when he is physically incapacitated to do so, in which case, a written notice to the agency within the same period is deemed as compliance. Failure of the seafarer to comply with the mandatory reporting requirement shall result in his forfeiture of the right to claim the above benefits. xxxx From the foregoing provision, it is explicit and clear that for purposes of determining the seafarer’s degree of disability, it is the company-designated physician who must proclaim that he sustained a permanent disability, whether total or partial, due to either injury or illness, during the term of his employment. This was the ruling in Panganiban v. Tara Trading Shipmanagement, Inc,[28] where it was held that there being no ambiguity in the wordings of the Standard Employment Contract that the only qualification prescribed for the physician entrusted with the task of assessing the elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/54687 6/12