Abstract:
Although
the French President has ordered Clemenceau to head back, the politics of toxic
waste and its disposal remains as murky as ever. The workers at the Alang
shipyard are the worst exposed to toxic wastes by the work they do of breaking
up ships past their prime. But their livelihoods are in jeopardy if ships like
Clemenceau do not come to their yards. [DSF Commentary on Science and
Development]
Keywords: Clemenceau;
ships-for-scrap; shipbreaking; Alang; toxic wastes; asbestos; France ;
environment; Science and Technology Studies;
Author: D.Raghunandan (raghunandan.d@gmail.com)
Publisher Info:
Paper
provided by eSocialSciences in its series Working Papers with number id:380
Created on: February 2006
Ships-for-Scrap Who will pay the price?
Although
the French President has ordered Clemenceau to head back, the politics of toxic
waste and its disposal remains as murky as ever. The workers at the Alang shipyard are the
worst exposed to toxic wastes by the work they do of breaking up ships past
their prime. But their livelihoods are
in jeopardy if ships like Clemenceau do not come to their yards.
The decommissioned French aircraft
carrier Clemenceau (pronounced kle-mon-so), once the pride of the French Navy
and having seen action in first Gulf War in 1991, left France on the last day
of 2005 on her last journey, to Alang in Gujarat, Asia’s largest shipbreaking
yard, to be dismantled for scrap. The main value lies in the 26,000 tonnes of
steel the ship will yield, worth about 8 million Euros (Rs.30 crore). The ship
was sold to the Ship Decommissioning Industry Corporation (SDIC) registered in Panama for a
paltry 100,000 Euros (Rs.3.6 crore).
A
very tidy profit for SDIC, and for the Indian companies contracted to handle
the shipbreaking, Shree Ram Scrap Vessels and the Luthra Group, given the
relatively low costs of transportation and labour involved in Alang. But the
cost to the health and even lives of these helpless unorganized workers is
enormous. Workers at Alang will be exposed to huge quantities of deadly
asbestos and a host of other highly toxic substances contained in the innards
of the ship, as they break it up and strip it by hand using primitive tools and
with no protective gear, special equipment or specialised training. And all the
toxic materials will then have to be disposed of somewhere in a landfill (read
dumped nearby), exposing numerous others to their ill effects as they get
dispersed in the air or seep into ground water.
This
is the ugly face of capitalist globalisation. Some people make millions while
others, mostly the poor in developing countries, have to pay a heavy price. India is
becoming a dumping ground for the toxic garbage of the West which finds it too
harmful to handle, too polluting to retain, and too expensive to clean up. So
the nasty job is simply outsourced to developing countries, no complaints
against loss of jobs on this count. And corporate collaborators in India , abetted
by a complicit establishment, are ready to offer scavenging services for a few
dollars.
Fortunately,
at the time of writing, thanks to the hue and cry raised by various trade
unions such as CITU in India and activist groups like Greenpeace and Ban
Asbestos Network in France, a Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (SCMC) on
Hazardous Wastes has recommended ruled that the Clemenceau not be allowed to
enter Indian waters since this would constitute a violation of the Basel
Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes.
This
will not be the last word. The Committee has given another 15 days for the
French authorities and SDIC to be heard, the Union Ministry of Environment and
Forests is openly favouring the deal, as is the Gujarat government, and
enormous pressure is being brought to bear. Above all, the Supreme Court itself
has not yet pronounced on the issue.
Illegal export by France
Gross
illegality is being committed by France . The ship is owned by the
French government (till the demolition is complete) which, being the actual
signatory to the Basel Convention, should have taken the lead in enforcing it
but is itself not only flouting its international obligations but also engaging
in various subterfuges to circumvent them.
All
through the 1990s, owners of decommissioned vessels managed to evade the Basel
Convention and send these end-of-life ships to Alang and other shipbreaking
yards in Bangladesh or China by
claiming that these vessels did not constitute “waste” and were actually ships
for recycling! However, the COP7 meeting of the Basel Convention ruled that
ships-for-scrap are indeed ‘waste’ and this decision was further underlined by
the EU in October 2004. Under current EU rules, it is illegal to send
end-of-life ships for scrapping unless they are decontaminated first.
It
is because of this rule, and the huge toxic burden of the Clemenceau, that the
ship was turned away by Turkey
in October 2003 and by Greece
in November that year. The ship was stranded for months in the Mediterranean
and finally had to be taken back to France for the partial
decontamination that was eventually done.
The
French government stated at the outset that 90 percent of an estimated 220
tonnes of asbestos would be removed in Toulon , France , by a specialist company, Technopure Ltd,
leaving only about 22 tonnes to be removed in India . This figure later somehow
changed to “about 45 tonnes” being left out of an initial 160 tonnes. But
Technopure, which cancelled its contract citing the “illegal and immoral”
position of the French government and whose officials voluntarily and at their
own expense testified before the SCMC, has stated that huge quantities of
removable asbestos remain on the ship. Technopure itself had submitted two
quotations, one for 3 million Euros and another for 6 million Euros for major
decontamination, and was awarded the lower quote based on which it removed 70
tonnes. Technopure feels that over 300 tonnes of asbestos remain in the form of
cables, flooring, funnel, boilers and engines, removal of which will not impair
the ships structure, and estimates that the Clemenceau contains as much as 500
tonnes of deadly asbestos!
Neither
the French authorities nor SDIC gave a detailed inventory of asbestos remaining
on the ship.
On
the other hand, the French authorities have gone to great lengths to justify
and legitimise their actions. In the legal case filed by activist groups in France , the
French government took the position that the Clemenceau, being a military
vessel, was outside the purview of the Basel Convention and even the civil
justice system! Astonishingly, the French
Court upheld this position and allowed the ship to
leave for India .
The claim by Ronon Ballot, Naval Attache in
the French Embassy in India ,
that the export of the Clemenceau to India for scrap is “in strict
compliance with European regulations” is clearly unsustainable.
Shameless Indian authorities
Whereas
the Supreme Court and its Monitoring Committee have more or less consistently
sought the proper implementation of the provisions of the Basel Convention, the
executive and even regulatory authorities have acted most shamefully in defence
of unscrupulous and profiteering recycling contractors and against the
interests of the workers and the environment.
The
Supreme Court ruled in October 2003 that before ships-for-scrap arrive in
Indian ports, they should have proper certification from the State Maritime
Board or other concerned authority “that it does not contain any hazardous
wastes and that the ship should be properly decontaminated by the owner prior
to the breaking (which itself should be conducted under supervision of the
specialist decontamination company in this case SDIC). This should be ensured
by the State Pollution Control Boards." In February 2005, the SCMC
stipulated that the Clemenceau could be allowed into India subject to several
conditions such as submission of a report from the contracting company (Sree
Ram) providing details of actual quantities of asbestos and other hazardous
materials removed from the ship, independent third-party audit verifying the
report and certificate from the French authorities that the ship has been
decontaminated and does not violate the provisions of the Basel Convention.
Further, it stipulated that the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF)
shall obtain all relevant documents from the French Embassy and “an official
statement that hazardous materials including asbestos have been removed upto 98
per cent” as originally promised. None of these conditions have thus far been
met.
Instead,
the Gujarat Maritime Board had appointed a company, the Gujarat Enviro
Protection and Infrastructure Ltd Maritime Board (GEPIL) to visit France and
submit a report on the hazardous material on the ship. GEPIL is supposed to
have made the visit quite some time back but its report is still awaited! Not
surprising since GEPIL is a sister-company of Sree Ram and part of the Luthra
Group!
It
has also been stated that “there is no loose asbestos” on the ship, as if only
suitcases of asbestos are to be considered hazardous wastes! For its part, the
Gujarat Pollution Control Board has blandly stated that it is quite capable of
handling the toxic wastes left over from the ship-breaking but has provided no
details of the proposed landfill sites or methods of disposal of other materials.
Perhaps
most shameful of all, the Secretary of the MoEF, Dr.Pradipto Ghosh, went on
record in interviews to newspapers and TV channels that there was nothing
illegal about the Clemenceau, that it was “completely legal for ships to come
to India for dismantling both as per the Indian as well as international laws”
(no mention of hazardous materials here) and that “the ship-breaking yard at
Alang is as per strict guidelines set up by the Supreme Court, which is
regularly monitored by the SCMC and other independent agencies” which as far
from the truth.
And
through all this, no mention at all of the workers at Alang, of measures taken
for their protection from exposure to asbestos and other toxic materials, of
any insurance or compensation. Ironically, even some environmentalists
prominent in highlighting the entire issue have demanded that France should take back all the asbestos
extracted from Clemenceau: this may save some environmental contamination in India but the
damage to the workers would have been done in any case.
Hazards of Asbestos
One
aspect of the entire issue has indeed received no attention in the media
reports, that is, the dangers of asbestos and its status in India .
Asbestos
has been classed as a highly hazardous material by the World Health
Organisation (WHO) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), especially
for workers involved in mining, manufacture or repair and maintenance work on
asbestos.
Asbestos
is a generic term covering several types of naturally occurring mineral fibres
that. These fibres can be very almost microscopic in size, about 700 times
smaller than human hair, and virtually indestructible (the Greek meaning of the
word asbestos).
Asbestos
fibres and dust are known to cause lung cancer and mesothelioma, a particularly
virulent and fatal cancer. Asbestos has been responsible for over 200,000
deaths in the USA , and the
EU estimates that about 500,000 people will die in Europe
over the next thirty years due to mesothelioma and lung cancer caused by asbestos.
Asbestos has therefore been banned by over 35 countries which now use
alternative materials. In India ,
many organizations including the National Institute of Occupational Health
backed by extensive studies in leading medical institutions, have called for a
complete ban on asbestos which unfortunately has yet to become reality.
While
it is true that even the WHO has said that the danger from such roofing
materials or asbestos insulation to the general population is quite low, WHO
also acknowledges that the dangers become hugely magnified when such roofing
material breaks or is being repaired as often happens, when the tiny fibres
will get released into the air and remain suspended for weeks exposing
everybody around. In the work environment in India ,
minimum standard for asbestos exposure is around 2 f/cc (fibres per cubic
centimetre) compared to 0.1-0.5 f/cc in the USA
and Europe .
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on 5 November 2011)
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