The NGO Platform on Shipbreaking, a coalition of
environmental, human rights and labor organizations, sent a letter to the
Flemish Environment Ministry on Monday calling on Belgium to seize the
end-of-life car carrier Global Spirit. The ship is now docked in Antwerp and
loading second hand cars to be delivered in West Africa before heading for the
infamous ship breaking beaches in India where at least six workers have died so
far this year crushed by steel plates and many more are sickened by occupational
disease due to ship-borne hazardous substances like asbestos or PCBs.
Under the Waste Shipment Regulation of the European Union,
Belgium is obliged to prevent the export of all hazardous wastes – including
from ships – from its shores to developing countries, says the NGO giving its
opinion of the situation:
The regulation was designed to prevent the environmental
injustice of rich countries exporting their toxic wastes to impoverished
countries lacking the technology and infrastructure to manage such wastes. The
European Commission has clearly stated that the laws in place are applicable in
the case of the Global Spirit and that Belgium has an obligation to ensure that
the ship is not exported for breaking to India.
“Belgium must move quickly to prevent this ship from
becoming a fugitive from the law. They must hold the ship, ascertain the
destination and survey it to assess the amounts of asbestos, PCBs and other
hazardous substances it is likely to contain,” said Ingvild Jenssen, policy
advisor of the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking. “According to European and Belgian
law, only if all hazardous materials are removed from the ship can it be
allowed to be exported to South Asia.”
The end-of-life vehicle carrier Global Spirit has been used
to transport cars for Nissan-Renault on a regular route Morocco-EU-Turkey and
is currently under long term time charter with Hoegh Autoliners under the
management of Autotrans based in France. The Global Spirit is sold to an Indian
breaker for scrap at a price of $6.8 million ($512 per ton). Only by using
cheap labor and avoiding costly environmental protections can a profit from the
steel be made at this high a price. The ship is expected to contain asbestos in
its construction as well as explosive and flammable fuel residues which lies as
a hidden danger for thousands of unprotected workers in Alang.
The Platform has sent a letter to the Japanese owners of the
ship, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Limited (MOL) and Nissan Car Carriers (NCC), calling
for a sustainable solution for the dismantling of the Global Spirit and the
adoption of a company policy on ship recycling that will ensure dismantling of
their fleet under safe and green conditions. The charterers of the ship, Hoegh
Autoliners, which also are 20 percent shareholders in NCC, have already adopted
a sustainable ship recycling policy for their ships ‘off the beach’.
“So far this year six workers have been reported killed by
falling steel plates at the Alang shipbreaking yard,” said Ritwick Dutta,
environmental lawyer at NGO Shipbreaking Platform member organization LIFE.
“Such practices would never be allowed in Belgium and it should not be allowed
in any country in the world.”
Currently over 70 percent of the global commercial fleet of
end-of-life ships are run ashore and broken by hand on the beaches of India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan, where labor is cheap, labor rights poorly respected
and pollution laws weak, lacking or not-enforced. Yet in Europe, government
owned ships are being broken only in sophisticated yards located in developed
countries while commercial vessels are still too often exported even when such
exports violate the law.
“It will be a glaring double standard and a sad irony if the
French and Belgian governments are forced to use a Belgium yard to recycle
their old ships and meanwhile Belgium fails to act to stop another toxic ship
from being exported from their shores,” said Ingvild Jenssen. “Both government
and commercially owned ships are illegal to export to developing countries, and
they should all be managed in green ship recycling yards in developed countries
and not on the dangerous and polluting beaches of South Asia,” she said.
Source: maritime executive.
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