5/28/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly “The employment of seafarers and its incidents, including claims for death benefits, are governed by the contracts they sign every time they are hired or rehired. Such contracts have the force of law between the parties as long as its stipulations are not contrary to law, morals, public order or public policy.”[54] By way of background, every seaman and the vessel owner (directly or represented by a local manning agency) are required to execute the POEA-SEC as a condition sine qua non to the seafarer’s deployment for overseas work.[55] While the seafarers and their employers are governed by their mutual agreements, the POEA rules and regulations require that the POEA-SEC be integrated in every contract. This contains the standard terms and conditions of the seafarer’s employment in foreign ocean-going vessels, [56] Under its Section 32-A, for an occupational disease and the resulting disability or death from it to be compensable, all of the following conditions must first be satisfied: 1. The seafarer’s work must involve the risks described herein; 2. The disease was contracted as a result of the seafarer’s exposure to the described risks; 3. The disease was contracted within a period of exposure and under such other factors necessary to contract it; and 4. There was no notorious negligence on the part of the seafarer.[57] An examination of the surrounding facts and circumstances regarding Simbajon’s sickness will show that the third condition from the above enumeration is absent in this case. Simbajon started exhibiting the symptoms of DM Type II barely six days after embarkation. If his disease had been acquired because of his exposure to different kinds of work-related stress, it is very unusual that it developed in a very short span of time. He claimed in his comment that as a seafarer, he had already finished three previous contracts with NCL. In effect, he argues that his exposure to the work-related risks had been long enough to trigger his DM Type II. Unfortunately, Simbajon failed to state the respective dates and durations of his three previous employment contracts with NCL. The absence of this evidence leaves the Court at a loss for supporting data on when he started working for NCL or if there had been long intervals in between his previous contracts to break their continuity. The records do not even disclose how long the interim period was in between his last and most present contract with NCL. To our mind, there is always the possibility that he acquired his disease at some other time when he was not on board and working in any of NCL’s vessels. To support his contention, Simbajon also pointed out that his PEME results cleared him elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/57289 6/16