Vessels are switching
their nation of registry to avoid EU restrictions
 |
| Much of the dismantling of ships at Alang is done by hand—without safety gear. |
The container ship MV
Justus, built in 1995 by Polish shipyard Gdynia Stocznia, spent most of its 19
years plying the seas with a European pedigree. It was first owned by a German
ship fund run by Hamburg-based asset manager König & Cie. But like a
growing number of aging vessels, the MV Justus changed its nationality only
months before being taken out of service. In doing so, it avoided a late 2013
measure by the European Union that banned ships registered in its 28 member
nations from using dangerous tidal beaches for ship demolition work.
On July 9, 2014, the
ship changed its flag to that of the tiny Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts,
according to data from NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a coalition of environmental,
human rights, and labor rights organizations working toward safe and clean ship
recycling. Then, after starting a journey from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands
on July 15 and sailing through Port Said and Dubai, data compiled by Bloomberg
show, it ended up on Aug. 17 near Bhavnagar, off the coast of the Indian state
of Gujarat—defying a year-old restriction from the EU. On Aug. 28, now under an
owner called Malwi Ship Breaking, according to Indian government data, the MV
Justus docked at Alang, the ofttimes dangerous yard where the world’s ships go
to die. True to form, about a month later a worker was killed when he fell from
a high ladder while breaking up the vessel. Another was severely injured.
König & Cie.
spokesman Detlef Seiler said via e-mail that the ship had declared insolvency.
“The sale for scrap was entirely in the hand of the [insolvency] administrator
and the financing bank,” he said, and König & Cie. wasn’t involved in the
ship’s flag change. Calls to a number for Malwi went unanswered.
Alang’s 11-kilometer
(6.8-mile) stretch of land has become the world’s largest yard for what’s known
as shipbreaking, the dirty, deadly work of tearing apart massive vessels so
that their steel and scrap can be sold or junked.
Despite the EU ban,
European ships keep coming to Alang. Some change their registrations, or flags,
to countries without such rules just before reaching Indian waters. “There are
special kinds of flags” valid for a few months that don’t require an operator
to set up shop in the issuing nation, says Patrizia Heidegger, executive
director of Brussels-based Shipbreaking Platform, and “they are particularly
cheap for a last voyage.”
Besides St. Kitts, the
flags come from such places as Comoros, Nevis, and Tuvalu, Heidegger says.
Although it could be used by shipowners to sidestep current EU regulations, the
process of changing registration is not illegal. Vishwapati Trivedi, India’s
shipping secretary, did not respond to interview requests. Nitin Kanakiya, the
secretary of India’s Ship Recycling Industries Association, says many owners
register their ships in such havens as the Bahamas, Liberia, and St. Vincent
for their stricter privacy laws, not in attempts to escape safety rules. Jakub
Adamowicz, a spokesman for transport at the EU, didn’t respond to an e-mail
seeking comment.
In Alang, about 1,200
kilometers from New Delhi, barefoot workers manually break up ships, exposing
themselves to toxins including asbestos and lead. As workers without protective
gear toiled on one hulk recently, explosive gas cylinders scavenged from other
dying vessels lay about nearby. “This is not shipbreaking, this is
international hazardous waste trade,” says Gopal Krishna, founder of
ToxicsWatch Alliance, a nonprofit activist group. “This is transfer of toxics
from developed nations to a developing nation.”
In 2014 as many as 181
European ships were beached in Alang, says Shipbreaking Platform, which
compiles the data from ship buyers, other nonprofits, and maritime databases.
As many as 27 of them changed flags before entering Indian waters, it says.
Ships entering India included oil and chemical tankers, according to Gujarat
government data obtained by Bloomberg.
Fatal accidents are
common in Alang. One morning last June, five workers were breaking up a
chemical tanker when a blast near the ship’s engine room killed them. Two weeks
later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi halved the tax on ships imported to be
broken up, potentially boosting the $2 billion industry that left at least 21
workers dead in 2014.
More than 130
shipbreakers operate at Alang, monitored by 12 safety inspectors. The EU
requires that shipbreakers use gear such as cranes and provide medical care for
workers. But Indian companies say their safety standards are adequate. “We have
our own safety mechanism in place, which is good enough,” says Kanakiya of
India’s ship recycling association. “What the EU demands is completely unnecessary,
and that will involve a lot of capital spending, which can make us economically
unviable.”
The Federation of Ship
Recycling Associations, a group of ship recyclers from Bangladesh, India, and
Pakistan, will meet in Singapore in March to jointly oppose the EU ban, it said
in a statement.
The bottom line:
European Union ships are barred from using India’s Alang beach for ship
demolition, but many sidestep the restrictions.
Source: bloomberg
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