In light of the crew change crisis that COVID-19 has brought, BIMCO’s offices in Shanghai announced that China opens up 10 ports for foreign crew change operations.
Namely, the 10 ports allowing foreign crew change are: Dalian, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Haikou.
Taking into account of the current COVID-19 situation, crew change operations will resume under certain requirements.
In fact, all shipping companies are advised to comply with the requirements set out in the said notice when effecting crew change which are as follows:
Foreign crew signing off
- comply with Chinese entry and staying regulations during the epidemic period
- acquire a valid departing air ticket, vessel ticket or bus ticket
- the disembarking point has facility to arrange “point-to-point” transfer to the outbound gate within the same city
- the ship in question has left the last foreign port in more than 14 days
- crew on board keeps a sound health and quarantine record
- crew change will be permitted at the designated Chinese port upon clearance by the Chinese Customs carrying out a proper quarantine checkout together with negative nucleic acid testing result
- the shipping company is required to rent a car to transfer the foreign crew from the disembarking point to the outbound gate point directly within the same city, or to embark another outbound ship directly once disembarking without any further stay in China.
What is more, all shipping companies are recommended to :
- closely monitor the port’s local quarantine conditions; and shall implement a closed-loop management as per the quarantine requirements issued by the local port.
- The said notice introduces a quarantine circuit-breaker mechanism. It operates in the following manner; a shipping company’s foreign crew change operations will be suspended for 15 days if there were 5 tested positive cases detected in their ship aggregate; or suspended for 30 days if there was found 10 tested positive cases in their ship aggregate. More than 10 tested positive cases found, the shipping company will not be allowed to operate until they pass a fresh assessment conducted by the relevant authorities.
It is BIMCO’s understanding that the various Chinese ports may take different pragmatic approaches when dealing with the foreign crew change. In practice, the final say lies ultimately with the local port government (the city’s leading group office of epidemic prevention and control) instead of the MOT in Beijing.
…BIMCO further noted.
Overall, BIMCO recommends that members planning to have crew change conducted in China, to consult their local agents for the latest requirements implemented by the port in question.
