The
ongoing confrontation between police and shipbreakers and the resultant strike
at Asia’s largest ship-recycling yard Alang-Sosiya in Bhavnagar promises to be
longer than expected; the district’s top police officer on Tuesday said there
is no question of bowing to demands to water down “culpable homicide” charges
under which three executives of a shipbreaking company have been booked after
an explosion and fire on-board a tank-ship that killed 6 workers 10 days ago.
Meanwhile,
the ongoing strike is set to snow-ball as shipbreakers announced they would be
sitting on an indefinite dharna from Wednesday onward.
“We
will start a dharna at 10.30 am at Rupam Chowk in Bhavnagar and we will
continue with it every day until our demands are met,” said Nikhil Gupta, joint
secretary of the Ship-Recycling Industries’ Association (SRIA), which has been
spearheading the agitation since last Friday, a day after the three company
executives were arrested.
The
businessmen are demanding the police drop “culpable homicide” charges against
these arrested colleagues and instead charge them under “death by negligence”,
which carries a lesser penalty.
But
Bhavnagar district Superintendent of Police Maninder Pawar told The Indian
Express on Tuesday there is “no question of dropping this charge because the
FIR was based on expert opinion from various government agencies involved in
ship-breaking, whether it be the Industries Department, the Gujarat Maritime
Board, Industrial Safety or Forensic Sciences divisions”.
“Whatever
changes may need to be affected will have to be done as per the law and the
courts can be approached for this later on,” Pawar added.
“It’s
a stand-off between the police and the businessmen now. They are seeing which
one of them blinks first,” a government official stationed at Alang-Sosiya
said.
Meanwhile,
the SRIA has raised a fresh demand for an independent inquiry into what it
alleges to be a nexus between cops and thieves who have been stealing materials
from the yard, a charge the police dismiss as an attempt to divert attention
from the recent tragedy.
A
joint committee with members from various industry associations in the
district, to be headed by heads of the Bhavnagar Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
has been formed to plan for a long-term agitation, Gupta added. “Other
industries have also supported us because they know that today it will be us
and tomorrow it could be them,” he said.
Officials
at Alang-Sosiya confirmed the yard remained quiet on Tuesday for the fourth
day, with thousands of transport vehicles and thousands of workers remaining
idle, steel rolling mills at a standstill and furnaces cold. The only activity
at the yard is the beaching of dead ships and the act of tying them down, they
said, with an average two or three vessels beaching each day.
To
prevent an exodus, SRIA members have, however, been paying workers their
regular salary, but the 15,000-odd tonnes of steel and other scrap metal daily
produced from the yard has dropped to almost nil.
Source: Indian Express. 17 October 2012
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