SINGAPORE — Singapore knew that facilitating crew change for seafarers stuck at sea could bring about risks such as importing Covid-19 cases, but it decided to go ahead anyway, to do the right thing as a maritime nation, said Senior Minister of State for Transport and Foreign Affairs Chee Hong Tat on Wednesday (Nov 18).
The Republic saw the situation – in which hundreds of thousands of seafarers were turned away by ports globally in the past months – as a humanitarian crisis that also compromised navigational safety and threatened the flow of essential goods.
“We took the position that we must start by doing the right thing, and then work with partners to do things right by putting i…
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