Singapore is facilitating crew change of about 500 to 600 sign-on or sign-offs from vessels each day, representing around 75% of the level seen prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chee Hong Tat, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Transport said Singapore used to handle around 800 crew changes per day.

Since March, Singapore has processed more than 60,000 crew changes from 3,500 vessels. It also continues to introduce new measures for safe exchanges of seafarers.

“As a maritime nation, Singapore will not let up in our crew change efforts. It is crucial to ensure the health and well-being of our seafarers. Doing so will translate to fewer marine incidents and increase safety in our waters,” Chee said.

“We are prepared to handle more crew change if the number of applications increases,” he added.

CrewSafe audit program

The minister also announced that Singapore will be moving into Phase 2 of its Crew Facilitation Centre (CFC), which will test-bed emerging technologies that support safer crew change procedures and will further increase efforts and funding to audit and accredit medical and holding facilities at crew source nations through the Singapore Shipping Tripartite Alliance Resilience (SGSTAR) Fund Taskforce (SFTF).

The CrewSafe audit programme of the SFTFinclude the use of electronic tamper-proof smart wearable devices while the crew are in quarantine, as well as secure document processing for onboarding crew.

“MPA will also be reaching out to our fellow members of the Port Authorities Roundtable (PAR) to encourage them to join these efforts. This will help ensure that consistent safety standards for crew change are met across the various ports, increasing the confidence of countries to conduct crew change,” Chee added.