Like
voracious ants, the columns of workers set about their task, stripping the
gargantuan gray hulks down to nothing. This coastal strip of southeastern
Bangladesh is where some of the oceans’ largest vessels meet their end, turned
into scrap by thousands of men and, sadly, children. The shipbreaking industry
is among Bangladesh’s most important. The nearly 70 companies whose recycling
yards line the beaches of Chittagong, the country’s main port, generate around
$1.3 billion annually. The salvaged steel accounts for some 80% of the
country’s domestic consumption. But the job is also considered among the
world’s most dangerous, and an E.U. ruling in late June means this lucrative
yet hazardous trade isn’t likely to change for the better.
When
the U.S. suspended trade privileges for Bangladesh on June 27, it cited the
Rana Plaza factory collapse in April and the Tazreen Fashion factory fire in
November as evidence of the Bangladeshi government’s failure to create decent
working conditions for its people. But little has been said of the country’s
shipyards. Following a lengthy debate, also on June 27, the E.U. concluded that
European-flagged vessels could still be beached and broken up on the shoreline
at Chittagong (and at other beaches in India and Pakistan), provided they go to
yards that implement proper measures for handling the toxic waste generated in
the process. It’s a small victory for the global green lobby, which has fought
to reduce the amount of hazardous material — like asbestos, PCB and lead — that
leech into the sand and sea each time a ship is stripped. Workers, however,
remain imperiled.
Media
are rarely granted access to the yards. TIME surveyed them from a chartered
boat that sailed closely along the shoreline and interviewed several workers,
who agreed to discuss working conditions so long as they could remain
anonymous. With little safety equipment save for hardhats, they climb ladders
30 m high inside the dark bowels of the vessels, using blowtorches to cut
through chunks of metal that can weigh up to 20 tons. Co-workers, many of whom
flock from the poorest parts of Bangladesh, uneducated and unqualified, stand
below waiting for the metal to come crashing down. Sometimes so do the cutters.
“Four
or five months ago I saw someone fall four stories from a ladder and land on
top of scrap metal. His face was the first thing to hit the floor,” recalls a
26-year-old worker, who has been working in the yards for seven years. (The
victim in question survived, but others are less fortunate.)
As
the recent tragedies of the garment industry show, safety standards for
Bangladesh’s low-paid labor force are painfully lacking. Shipbreaking Platform,
a Brussels-based coalition of groups that advocate for better conditions in the
Chittagong yards, says 15 people died in the area last year. (The total on-site
workforce is around 30,000.) One victim, Korshed Alam, was crushed by a falling
metal plate. He was just 16.
One
worker remembers an incident 10 years ago when a 40,000-ton oil tanker arrived
at a nearby yard without having the highly flammable gases still contained
within its holds properly drawn off. It exploded. “The bodies just flew out
like birds. Maybe 100 people died,” he says. Another winces as he sits down to
speak to TIME. The 23-year-old hasn’t been able to work for a year — last July
he was sent up a ladder to cut down a piece of metal that others had been
unable to shift. It swung down into his right abdomen, shattering five ribs and
damaging his urinary tract. His company paid for a month of treatment, but he
is still in pain and, unable to work, has to sell his possessions to survive.
Yet
the business continues because, as a poor nation, Bangladesh has little choice.
“To develop we need a lot of steel, and importing the finished product becomes
very expensive,” says Mohammed Mohsin, head of one of Bangladesh’s largest
shipbreaking companies, PHP Group. “We say these vessels are like floating
iron-ore mines.” Every part of the ship is recycled — not just the steel — and
stores line the highway to the yards selling items that have been carried off,
from bathroom sinks to gas cylinders and rubber pipes.
Shipyard
owners acknowledge the risks for workers, but say outside pressure has led to
improvement. Mohsin’s yard was visited by the International Labour Organization
four years ago; he now keeps medics on site and claims to have a
water-treatment program. The toxins released when ships are broken down are
highly corrosive for both environment and worker. (Many workers report
breathing difficulties and itchy skin, but at around $4 a day, wages are too
low to pay for treatment.) The E.U. requirement that yards improve the handling
of hazardous materials is a step in the right direction, but it also threatens
to thwart member countries’ adoption of the 2009 Hong Kong Convention, which
aims to protect both workers and the environment, and not merely the latter.
Simon Bennett, from the International Chamber of Shipping, warns that
differences in legislation could render E.U. member states unable to ratify the
more encompassing Hong Kong Convention. Without this, he says, there may be “no
improvements in South Asian yards.”
Despite
the danger, children also come for work. One 12-year-old has already worked a
year as a “cutter’s helper,” carrying blowtorches and occasionally climbing a
high ladder to help dislodge metal slabs. He recently saw the leg of one worker
crushed under falling metal. Another boy, 13, among a group of workers
interviewed in a Chittagong hotel room, says there were no barriers when it
came to getting a job as a minor. “I came and asked if I could work. They said
yes.” Mohsin says he does not use children in his yard, but still defends the
practice. “We bring the children into this world; they need three basic things:
food, shelter, clothing. Our parents cannot provide those, our government
cannot afford to provide those. What are those children going to do if they
don’t work?”
NGOs
want to ban toxic end-of-life ships being beached at these yards until major
efforts are undertaken to stem pollution and improve conditions for workers,
including better training, mechanization of equipment and provision of on-site
medics. But such groups are ranged against the owners of a multimillion-dollar
business and a government eager for cheap, domestically produced steel. And
because shipping is not a retail industry, the powerful international consumer
pressure brought to bear on fashion brands that manufacture their products in
Bangladeshi sweatshops is absent. A funky pair of jeans is one thing. But
there’s no glamour in an old oil tanker.
Source: By Francis Wade. 9 July 2013
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