Bangladesh is one of the
countries in Asia which has been actively involved in commercial ship-breaking
for more than two decades. The ship graveyard at Shitakundha, Chittagong is the
only ‘iron mine’ of the land. Bangladesh purchases on average 180-250 old ships
a year for scrapping. At present, the number of active ship-breaking yards is
30 and around 30,000 workers are directly and around 50,000 indirectly employed
in those yards.
Key reasons for
establishment of the ship-breaking industry at Shitakunda area are: the natural
grounding facility, low financial investment required for human resources and
for machinery to operate the business, high demand for low-cost raw materials
for re-rolling mills (mills that produce iron bars), cheap labour, low
enforcement of legislation related to the business, isolation from the
conscious public eye and weak monitoring infrastructure of government agencies.
In reality, the ship-scrapping yards at Shitakunda operate by self-made rules
of the yard and company owners.
The work in the
ship-breaking yards is mostly labour-intensive and 100% contract-based. There
is no formal worker-management relationship, job security or social safety-net
schemes for them. 98% of the labour in scrapping yards are illiterate and lack
formal training; and 100% of them are unorganised. Occupational accidents,
injury and deaths are very frequent and normal events there.
No available data or
reports exist on workers health in ship-breaking industries in the region, more
specifically in Bangladesh. This indicate that there is no, and there never has
been any, systematic monitoring structure of health among workers in
ship-scrapping yards in our region.
Workers receive
potential negative health impacts from traditional working procedures adopted
in the scrapping yards such as:
• torch cutting without
protection (eye and skin injuries)
• heavy lifting (wear
and tear, back injuries)
• noise (hearing defects)
and from the exposure to
hazardous substances such as:
• asbestos
• chemicals (PCS, PCV,
PAH, Tin-organic compounds oils)
• heavy metals
• fumes (dust, fume/gas
components; dioxines, isocyanates, sulphur, etc.)
Asbestos-containing
materials (ACM) are found in the thermal system insulation and on surfacing
materials. When ACM deteriorates or is disturbed, asbestos breaks up into very
fine fibers that can be suspended in the air for long periods and possibly
inhaled by workers and operators at the facility or by people living near by
the scrapping yards. The most dangerous asbestos fibers are too small to be
visible. Once they are inhaled, the fibers can remain and accumulate in the
lung. Breathing high levels of asbestos fibers can lead to an increased risk of
lung cancer, mesothelioma (a cancer of the chest and abdominal linings), and
asbestosis (irreversible lung scarring that can be fatal). The risk of lung
cancer and mesothelioma increases with the level of exposure. Symptoms of these
diseases do not show up until many years after exposure. Most people with
asbestos-related diseases have been exposed to elevated concentrations in
connection with their work.
Asbestos removed from a
ship is still not necessarily regulated as hazardous waste in Bangladesh and
elsewhere. In fact, in Bangladesh and some other countries asbestos is
recovered by manual crushing and then re-custed, or-re-formed, for re-use.
The potential health
impacts associated with the use of asbestos are of such a severe nature that
compulsory minimum precautions are necessary. This includes worker
education/capacity-building training and awareness in the ship-breaking yards
on the negative effects of asbestos, protection of workers when extracting
asbestos from vessels, a ban on the re-use of asbestos, the securing of the
disposal of asbestos and measures preventing asbestos from re-entering the
market from scrapyards.
Most of the ordinary
workers in the ship-breaking industry in the Shitakunda area of Chittagong do
not have any minimum knowledge about asbestos exposure and its consequence.
Rather, the employer of the ship-breaking yard strongly insists that asbestos
is not dangerous to the health. Even the labour inspectors of the government
have very little knowledge of the asbestos issue.
There is no data about
the number of victimized workers in ship-breaking industry exposed to asbestos
while at work in last 35 years. The Labour Law 2006 of Bangladesh has declared
‘Asbestosis’ as a listed occupational disease. But due to the absence of trade
union organization for workers and invisible labour inspection at the yard
level, a decent work scenario is completely absent and it is very essential to
develop a social dialogue mechanism in the ship-breaking industry to change
this long-existing negative situation.
Growing
Ban Asbestos Movement in Bangladesh:
Bangladesh Occupational
Safety, Health and Environment Foundation (OSHE) is currently implementing an
action project titled as Awareness Raising Project on Asbestos in Ship-breaking
Industry of Bangladesh since July 2006 with the support of Federatie
Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV) in Chittagong district of Bangladesh as part of
its mission to achieve a ban on asbestos in Bangladesh through a collective
stakeholders initiative.
The objectives of the
project are to create asbestos awareness among workers in the ship-breaking
industry; to strengthen the local voice of the asbestos victim; to develop
trade union organization by workers’ initiative; to improve the health and
safety situation, and the status of workers rights in this sector for the
benefit of the workers, local community and the labour movement. Eight major
national trade union centres of Bangladesh are the key beneficiaries of this
particular project. In the meantime the project has been able to train up 40
workplace trainers and organizers to carry out the grass-root workers education
and asbestos sensitization programme. Furthermore a local union network for the
ship-breaking industry has been established to strengthen organizing and
asbestos awareness actions at the yard level.
The implementing project
will ultimately contribute towards strengthening the growing ‘ban asbestos’
movement in Bangladesh and honing international voices and actions for a Global
Ban on Asbestos.
Source: Asia Monitor
Resource Centre. 28 September 2007
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