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The crew change consists of replacing one amongst the ship’s crew members with another one and involves sign-on the ships and sign-off the ship's procedures. The maritime sector is among the worst-hit sectors due to coronavirus pandemic. Despite that, all the Indian Ports are operational and provided essential services throughout the pandemic. To sustain the maritime transportation during the pandemic situation, DG Shipping had taken various initiatives like extensions of certificates required for sailing and online e-pass facility for travel. Shipping Minister Mansukh Mandaviya lauded the efforts to help stranded seafarers during the pandemic and involved having a powerful grievance redressal mechanism for seafarers. “Ministry of Shipping has facilitated quite 1,00,000 crew changes on Indian ports and thru charter flights. it is the highest number of crew change within the planet," the Ministry of Shipping said during a press release. The minister strongly emphasized the need to form sure that seafarers should be able to approach the ministry during the difficult time and no seafarer should suffer due to poor grievance redress system, the statement said. "An online utility has been created for verification of seafarers for charted flights and for uploading details of stranded seafarers at the side of online ship registrations and online charter licensing." DG, Shipping Amit Kumar said. The DG Shipping received communications via emails, tweets, and letters from quite 2000 Maritime Stakeholders and took immediate responsive action to facilitate their needs. Sources: https://www.deccanherald.com/national/shipping-ministry-facilitates-over-1-lakh-crew-change-during-covid-19-period-877730.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/change-of-over-100-000-crew-members-facilitated-at-ports-shipping-ministry-120082501329_1.html