The shipbreaking
industry is a lucrative business, but unless the international community
hastens to adopt more effective safety regulations, it will have a negative
impact on the shipping sector at large
Every year,
thousands of shipping vessels succumb to rust, corrosion and metal fatigue; no
longer deemed fit for purpose. When their time eventually comes, these goliaths
of the sea are broken down in an attempt to recoup as much money from their
demise as possible – a process known as shipbreaking. Ship breakers strip out
absolutely everything: nothing is wasted. Any parts that can be sold for re-use
aboard another vessel are salvaged first, with the remaining morsels extracted
and sold for scrap.
Shipbreaking is an
extremely profitable business. Scrapping companies pay roughly $400 per tonne,
and so, considering the sheer size of the ships that come ashore to be
dismantled, the process can easily add up to scrappers collectively paying a
total of anywhere between $3m and $10m for a single vessel.
Shipbreaking takes
place all over the world, but the manner in which it is carried out differs
considerably: in developed countries, the process is handled the by the book,
with scrapping companies forced to adhere to strict environmental guidelines
outlined by the United Nations Environmental Programme’s (UNEP) 2003 Basel
Convention, which stresses the importance of controlling the trans-boundary
movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.
As a consequence of
the comprehensive enforcement of these rules, ship breakers in developed
countries must ensure that practically every part of the decommissioned vessel
is recycled, with only the small amount of unrecyclable materials left over as
waste. The guidelines also ensure that before workers begin the process of
dismantling a ship, all potentially dangerous materials, including any toxic or
flammable gases and liquids, are removed. This procedure is carried out not
only to protect the surrounding environment from leakages or contamination
during the scrapping process, but also as a safety precaution for those tasked
with carrying out the heavy lifting.
Unfortunately, the
vast majority of shipbreaking does not occur on the beaches and dry docks of
developed nations: more than two thirds of the industry is based in developing
countries, specifically India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China (see Fig. 1).
These countries have historically struggled to meet the international standards
of practice, with employees forced to deal with working conditions that
threaten their health and safety each and every day. What’s more, many of the
workers that are tasked with carrying out this difficult and precarious process
receive very little in the way of training, and are poorly paid for their
labour.
“Without a voice in
the workplace, daily abuses go unchallenged”, Nazim Uddin, the leader of the
Bangladeshi shipbreaking union, explained in a report conducted by the global
workers union IndustriALL. “Shipbreaking workers have miserable conditions.
Workers are paid daily – no work, no pay. They receive no paid leave at all, no
bonus, no gratuity, and have no job guarantee. Employers pay no compensation to
the killed workers’ families. The High Court rules that each killed worker’s
family should be compensated BDT 500,000 ($6,400), but employers do not respect
this.”
In response to such
allegations, major industry bodies, governments and numerous non-profit
entities have campaigned tirelessly in the hope of getting South Asian scrap
yards to adhere to international guidelines in an attempt to reduce
shipbreaking’s environmental impact, and to improve the lives of workers
involved in the industry.
All
hands on deck
One of the loudest
voices in the battle to improve the conditions in the ship recycling sector
belongs to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS). This organisation has
helped to raise awareness about the sub-standard practices that take place
within the shipbreaking industry, along with the environmental impact that
these have and the dangers that they pose to workers.
“The industry
accepts its responsibility to promote the safe and environmentally sustainable
disposal of ships in the world’s ship recycling yards, the majority of which
are located in developing countries”, Peter Hinchliffe, ICS Secretary General,
said in a statement. “Adherence to these transitional measures should be seen
as a sign of good faith prior to the entry into force of the IMO regime. But
they will also help companies avoid falling foul of the separate EU ship
recycling regime, which started to take effect on 31 December, and which is
also relevant to ships flying non-EU flags.”
More recently, the
ICS has reached out to its members around the world, encouraging them to follow
a new set of transnational measures. This will in turn help those members to
comply with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Hong Kong Convention
once the global regime comes into force. The ICS has expressed its hope that
the measures it has outlined will help ship owners ensure that when their
vessels reach the end of their life on the high sea, they will be recycled in
the appropriate manner and scrapped by ship breakers using the correct
procedures.
“The transitional
measures demonstrate that the shipping industry is playing its full part”,
Hinchliffe added in his statement. “It is disappointing that after six years
the Hong Kong Convention has still only been ratified by a handful of IMO
Member States. Governments need to make this a far more urgent priority if they
are serious about improving conditions in ship recycling yards on a global
basis.”
As such, despite
increased regulatory pressure and the support of international trade
associations like the ICS, conditions in many South Asian scrap yards are still
abysmal, and have shown little sign of improving.
Graveyard
shift
The men whose job
it is to dismantle these end-of-life ships once they have run ashore on the
beaches of South Asia are more often than not poor, unskilled migrants. The
vessels in question are usually full the brim with toxic materials, and the
workers must contend with a range of highly flammable gases and liquids. To
make matters worse, these unqualified workers are rarely supplied with adequate
levels of safety equipment or the essential tools that could make the
shipbreaking process altogether far safer and simultaneously reduce the toll it
takes on their physical health.
According to the
website Shipbreaking in Bangladesh, which is owned and operated by the
non-profit social development organisation Young Power in Social Action (YPSA),
in order to make up for the lack of equipment that they receive, workers in
shipbreaking yards often resort to crude, improvised methods in order to try
and protect themselves: “When a new ship arrives, there are containers,
chambers and tanks which contain oil, petroleum and poisonous gases”, according
to the website.
“One method used
for checking the level of danger in these parts of the ship is to lower down
chickens [on] a string to check whether there are dangerous gases. If the
chickens survive, the first workers will enter to clean for oil, petroleum and
other flammable substances. The flammable substances are often burned off
before the cutters enter to rip the ship apart. Gas explosions [are] a common
phenomenon.”
If the threat of
explosions and poisonous gases wasn’t bad enough, workers are also at risk of
being crushed to death by cranes and other heavy lifting equipment, which are
placed on slick, muddy sand that is unable to adequately support them. The
terrible conditions that these labourers work in combined with the lack of
adequate safety equipment and the complete disregard for international
regulations has led to thousands of ship breakers losing their lives.
The Gadani
shipbreaking yard in Pakistan is one of the world’s largest ship recycling
facilities. According to an IndustriALL article, its 15,000-strong workforce
regularly works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, under horrendous conditions,
while their pay is around PKR 12,000 a month – a figure that the union equates
to around $113. The organisation also claims that workers at Gadani have no
access to clean drinking water or first aid. The net impact of all this is that
at this specific ship recycling yard, more than 19 people lose their lives
every year.
Changing
the tide
In order to bring
an end to the needless loss of life and reduce the environmental impact of the
industry, campaigners are urging countries around the world to implement
guidelines outlined in the Hong Kong Convention, which was adopted by the IMO
in 2009. However, so far only Norway, the Republic of Congo and France have
fully ratified the convention, while Italy, St Kitts and Nevis, Turkey and the
Netherlands have expressed their willingness to adopt the guidelines outlined
in the agreement.
“Ship building for
130,000 workers in South Asia is predominantly done in medieval conditions”,
said Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of IndustriALL, in the same article. “It is
shameful that five years have passed since the Hong Kong Convention’s adoption
and only three countries have ratified… The Hong Kong Convention will change
lives.”
For the convention
to enter into force, 15 states, representing 40 percent of the world’s merchant
shipping (by gross tonnage), must be on board. As such, this initial
undertaking is evidently not good enough. More widespread support is clearly
required if these life-changing policies are ever to be put into effect.
Source:
world
finance. 10 March 2016
