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Crew Change has not been a straightforward issue to work around in the COVID-19 situation, with fears of imported cases in many nations lurking. Still, countries like Singapore have made case-by-case exceptions for special circumstances, such as medical reasons, for crews to sign off and return to their home country. However, this approach has only temporarily addressed a deeper issue, as an increasing number of seafarers extend their contracts on ships, leading to a decline in seafarer well-being.
Singapore, one of the busiest ports and home to the world’s top five largest ship registries, has actively addressed the situation as it has unfolded. Gwee Guo Duan, Assistant General Secretary of SMOU, told SeaVoices about the ‘Singapore Crew Change Workgroup (SGCCWG)’ that has been working on a viable solution since April 2020 for the crew change process to be implemented at our ports. Gwee sits at the workgroup as a representative of SMOU, providing a union perspective for decision-making.
Made up of maritime tripartite partners—the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), Singapore Shipping Association (SSA), and SMOU—the workgroup first met on 21 April to address challenges and come up with a watertight framework to facilitate crew change in a safe manner. The International Maritime Employers Council (IMEC) also joined the workgroup on 19 May 2020 to contribute to the objective. Due to the international scale of crew change challenges and many nations still struggling with the pandemic at hand, the SGCCWG focused on working on developing medium-term solutions for this matter.
A Comprehensive Guidebook
SMOU formulated a survey on 22 April to provide the workgroup with a rough indication of the number of seafarers due to sign off in Singapore. SMOU conducted the survey with companies under its Collective Bargaining Agreement and later expanded it to include a broader sample of SSA and IMEC members. The survey provided concrete statistics that the SGCCWG used as a basis for discussions with agencies like the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to arrange flights for crew changes.
To gain consensus of the other nations that might be involved in repatriation and sending of seafarer relievers to and from Singapore, tripartite partners drew up a comprehensive checklist of processes to facilitate crew changes in the midst of the pandemic. The step-by-step flow chart featuring various scenarios of seafarer signing-off from a vessel or signing-on to a vessel is detailed in the guidebook. Mandatory stay-home notice periods for relievers and assessment of signing-off crew by a seaport doctor before disembarkation are some examples of added precautions to ensure that crew change is done with minimal risk of COVID-19 transmission. The SGCCWG had to consider all angles and scenarios in their discussions so as to prevent any aggravation of COVID-19 cases in nations facilitating crew change.
A Model Framework for Crew Change
After many meetings and hard work, the Singapore Crew Change Guidebook was released and circulated on June 1 to the maritime community. On 11 June, the Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) saw the value of the guidebook and sent out a circular letter to encourage member states to take it as a model and develop similar guides to address crew change in their own nation.
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