These culminated in the COVID-19 Singapore Crew Change Guidebook, which laid out protocols for safe crew changes. It alleviated the pressure on SMOU, which for months had to field incessant calls from shipping companies enquiring about crew change procedures.
The CrewSafe audit programme was also set up by the SG-Star Fund Taskforce in December 2020. SMOU staff helped shape the auditing process of quarantine and medical facilities in crew-supplying nations, by verifying if their practices met Singapore requirements.
This enabled the white-listing of legitimate clinics for testing, weeding out those offering bogus negative certificates. SMOU’s contacts proved crucial in sifting out the bad from the good clinics as Union staff worked with auditors in seafarer-supplying countries to conduct assessments based on the given criteria.
These have served as reference guidelines for member states at the International Maritime Organization.
Focus on Financial and mental well-being
As the pandemic raged on, SMOU also paid attention to the financial welfare of its members.
While COVID-19 relief packages offered by the government were able to help many shore-based workers, seafarers seemed to fall through the cracks due to the contractual nature of their work. This meant they could not qualify for many of the help schemes.
Tripartism came to the rescue. MPA, SMOU and SOS collaborated to introduce the Seafarers Relief Package (SRP) in April 2020, providing up to $800 a month for Singaporean seafarers unable to secure shipboard employment.
One of the beneficiaries was Third Officer Mohamed Farhan bin Mohamed Fadillah, who received close to $2,000 over three months when he did not have any income.
“I was on board another vessel and was supposed to sign off in March (2021), but I could only get back a month later because both China and New Zealand (NZ) did not have any flights to Singapore,” he told SeaVoices in November 2021.
His Burmese vessel captain was stranded far longer, sailing for a year without being able to leave the ship because of the pandemic and the political situation in Myanmar.
Such situations have highlighted another concern: The mental health of seafarers when they are stranded at sea without family support.