8/26/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Pursuant to the 2010 POEA-SEC, which applies to this case, the employer is liable for disability benefits only when the seafarer suffers from a work-related injury or illness during the term of his contract.[38] In this regard, work-related injury is defined as an injury arising out of and in the course of employment.[39] Upon finding that the seafarer suffers a work-related injury or illness, the employer is obligated to refer the former to a company-designated physician, who has the responsibility to arrive at a definite assessment of the former's fitness or degree of disability within a period of 120 days from repatriation.[40] This period may be extended up to a maximum of 240 days, if the seafarer requires further medical treatment, subject to the right of the employer to declare within this extended period that a permanent partial or total disability already exists.[41] The responsibility of the company-designated physician to arrive at a definite assessment within the prescribed periods necessitates that the perceived disability rating has been properly established and inscribed in a valid and timely medical report. [42] To be conclusive and to give proper disability benefits to the seafarer, this assessment must be complete and definite;[43] otherwise, the medical report shall be set aside and the disability grading contained therein shall be ignored.[44] As case law holds, a final and definite disability assessment is necessary in order to truly reflect the true extent of the sickness or injuries of the seafarer and his or her capacity to resume work as such.[45] Failure of the company-designated physician to arrive at a definite assessment of the seafarer's fitness to work or permanent disability within the prescribed periods and if the seafarer's medical condition remains unresolved, the law steps in to consider the latter's disability as total and permanent.[46] In this case, records reveal that petitioner sustained a back injury while doing sanding works as an Able Seaman during his employment on board respondents' vessel.[47] For respondents' part, there appears to be no categorical assessment from the companydesignated physician that petitioner's injury was not work-related, as the former even suggested a partial disability grading.[48] Clearly, these facts negate respondents' claim that the injury did not arise out of and in the course of employment, and hence, must be deemed work-related. Moreover, while the company-designated physician's assessment[49] was issued within the 120-day period, which was on February 6, 2015 or 106 days after petitioner's repatriation, it could not have been a final and definite assessment as mandated by law, considering the language of the assessment showing that the disability grading was merely interim, as it was declared that "prognosis is guarded" and "[i]f patient is entitled to a disability, his suggested disability grading is Grade 8 - loss of 2/3 lifting power of the trunk." Notably, the company-designated physician even informed petitioner that "[f]itness to work is unlikely to be given within his 120 days of treatment." The medical report reads: https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/65474 4/11