Conflict arises between the IMO and the NGO Platform over Bangladesh ShipBreaking:

China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are all feeling the international pressure to ensure the health and safety of their ship breaking workers. Countries such as the UK are seeing more investment into ship ‘recycling’ yards. Yet the developing countries need the steel produced from the redundant vessels to feed their growing construction industries.

Grazia Cioci, director of the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking has this week written an article on Lloyds List (8th February) discussing a letter that was sent to the Bangladeshi Prime Minister and subsequent claims from Nikos Mikelis on Lloyds List.

The incident began when the NGO platform sent a letter to Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh suggesting that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is investing money into the country’s shipbreaking industry with a political agenda.

This was followed by Nikos Mikelis (IMO) accusing the NGO Platform of being ‘totally inaccurate’ (Lloyds List 28th January). In actuality, Lloyds List report that the IMO has been giving guidance to the Norwegian Government, who is planning to donate $5m to the Bangladeshi Government. This money is intended to be used to improve Bangladesh’s waste management systems and building relationships between the various governments’ ministries involved in the shipbreaking industry. Mikelis – senior implementation officer at the IMO- challenged the NGO to provide more practical solutions to shipbreaking if it is to be taken off Bangladesh’s beaches.

 

In response, the NGO Platform argued on Lloyd’s list that whether the IMO or the Norwegians are offering money to the Government, the fact that they are doing it at the very time that the Bangladesh Government is in melt down over shipbreaking and hazardous waste transportation means something is going on under the radar.

Grazia Cioni, Director of the NGO argued: "It is immaterial whether Norway is offering the funding guided by IMO or through the IMO budget.

The intent is the same: to influence, through the dangling of serious dollars, the Bangladesh government at a moment when the Bangladesh high courts have had the audacity to enforce Bangladesh’s international obligations under the Basel Convention."

Mikelis argued that vessels cannot be pre-cleaned as this would require removing vital elements of the ship, and it having to be towed to the recycling location.