Following the coronavirus pandemic and the crew change crisis, major industry players have joined their forces to ensure the safety of their crewmemebers and protect the global supply chain.
In light of the above, the crew specialist Danica, reported that the coronavirus measures are proved to cost as well as tricky warns.
The price tag for the necessary Covid-19 precautions comes at a difficult time for the shipping industry in general but we are fortunate that the owners which Danica works with are all providing the necessary funds to get overdue crew off the vessels.
…Henrik Jensen of Danica Crewing Services said.
In fact, Mr. Jensen informed that they recently placed a crew team of 19 of Ukrainian and Filipino nationality onboard a vessel, with the necessary pandemic-related procedures to cost approximately $10.000 USD, which the ship owner had to cover.
Specifically, the costs included COVID-19 PCR tests of all the seafarers, the local transport, hotel accommodation, food etc.
In case that the coronavirus test was not available in the seafarers’ home town, they had to further travel to another city to get the test done and wait there for the result before they could travel, gaining additional ‘fit-for-travel’ medical certificates too, as required by the authorities in the joining port.
Although we are able to do crew changes in many ports now, we also have a number of vessels in places where crew changes are not allowed at all, or rules are so strict that it makes crew changes impracticable, and consequently the number of overdue crew members on these vessels is growing and the situation is becoming urgent.
….Mr Jensen commented.