Thirty-four-year-old
Massood was skinny, but muscular. His hands and arms were dotted with deep,
jagged scars; the so-called "Chittagong tattoos." From the look in
his eyes, you could tell he was physically exhausted. I could see his bones
shine through the linen shirt loosely dangling around his body. He spends his
days dismantling ships on the beaches of Chittagong, the commercial heart of
Bangladesh. He starts work when the sun rises and spends the next 12, or
sometimes 14, hours a day laboring while being intimidated by an angry boss.
The work is tough, the heat burns, and there is no shade in sight.
Massood mets us on
a square in the center of Chittagong after the sun had set, marking the end of
a day’s work. It was rush hour and drivers of tuktuks, rickshaws and buses
permanently sound their horns. The noise was so deafening we could hardly hear
Massood talk, and he struggles to raise his voice.
He's been working
in the yards for 15 years. When he was 19, a so called "shipyard
recruiter" came to collect him in the poor north of Bangladesh. His
family’s land had just been flooded by the monsoon rains, and he was doomed to
either let him and his family starve to death or join this man who promised him
a job in the bustling, prosperous Chittagong. Massood had no other choice than
to go with the man. In return for Massood, the recruiter gave his family a few
ten dollar notes.
Ever since, Massood
has been trapped on one of the largest shipbreaking yards in the world. He
breaks down the world’s biggest rusty, old supertankers, cargo ships, and
cruises that have been made redundant for scrap recycling. But rather than
being dismantled in an environmentally friendly way, they’re dumped on an
eight-mile stretch of the coast of Chittagong, where labor and environmental
laws are not taken too strictly and cheap labor is abundant. Every day, more
than 30,000 workers are risking their lives for little more than $2.00 a day.
Although the yards
claim all the necessary equipment is in place to provide workers with the protection
they need, the workers say they don’t get any safety gear. They scrap the ships
with their bare hands while holding acetylene torches.
Shipbreaking
Platform, an NGO which advocates for laborers' rights, has called the work
"modern day slavery," and estimates about 20 percent of the workers
are under 15.
An estimated 150 to
200 ships get stranded on Chittagong’s coast annually. According to official
figures, 20 workers died in the yards in 2013, but the actual death toll is
estimated to be much higher, as most workers have never been officially
registered. Incidents are by and large not reported by the shipyard’s managers,
who prefer to turn their backs on the accidents. Young Power in Social Action
(YPSA), a local watchdog group, estimates at least one worker dies each week.
Shipbreaking Platform reported that four laborers were killed and three were
seriously injured by a gas cylinder explosion in April of this year.
These numbers,
however, do not take into account all the workers that succumb to the toxic or
carcinogenic substances that get released when the ships are broken down;
substances like asbestos, lead, and PCBs. Lung cancer is common, and the
average life span of the workers is just 40.
“Every day I go to
work thinking I might die,” Massood said. His dad, who joined Massood in the
yards late in his life, died in an explosion that Massood witnessed. He has
also seen several of his colleagues fall victim to explosions, caused by
ruptures in gas cylinders. Steel plates sometimes falls and crush people to
death.
“It’s a knockout
game.” Massood said. He's gotten used to the fear and accidents in the yards.
Massood is
permanently surrounded by the smell of asbestos. His food, which mostly
consists of vegetables—he cannot remember when he last ate meat—tastes like
asbestos. His clothes smell like it, as does his house, which is a bamboo hut
in the shantytowns behind the yards.
Despite widespread
international criticism of the working conditions in the yards, the industry is
one of the lifelines of the Bangladesh economy. As you drive towards the yards
in a three-wheeled tuktuk with an air pollution facemask on, the business the
shipbreaking generates is everywhere. Little shops sell stacks of cylinders,
pipes or turbines, while others have life jackets, buoys, and ships’ ropes on
display.
The industry has an
annual turnover of $1.5 billion and employs a total of about 200,000 people in
Bangladesh. This scrapping is the country’s main source of steel and reduces
the need to import the material. The Bangladesh government collects an
estimated $130 million in revenue per year from the industry. And as the
country’s economy continues to boom—Goldman Sachs has identified the Bangladesh
economy as one of "the next eleven"—the demand for steel will grow
and the number of ships in the Chittagong yards will continue to increase as
well. YPSA's Muhammed Ali Shahin said he expects the industry to become more
aggressive and competitive in the coming years. He also expects it to cause
more pollution.
Bangladesh pays no
attention to international laws on trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes.
In 2009, the High Court of Bangladesh said shipbreaking should be strictly
regulated and could only take place in properly structured areas, such as
docks, rather than on beaches. But the government does not enforce its own laws
or listen to the orders of the High Court, according to the Bangladesh
Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA)—it prioritizes profit instead.
Last October, rules
were implemented by the European Parliament banning the breaking of
shipscarrying an EU flag on beaches where working conditions are poor, like
those in Asia. In practice, these rules don’t mean much—two thirds of ships
dismantled on Asian beaches do not carry the European flag. Ship owners replace
European flags by ones of a non-EU country, like Trinidad, Liberia, or Panama,
allowing the ships to ignore EU rules.
In 2013, a total of
1,213 large commercial ships were dismantled globally. More than half of these
ships were discarded on beaches in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, where labor
and environmental laws are hardly looked after. These 1,213 ships account for
71 percent of the tonnage being dismantled in the world, according to
Shipbreaking Platform.
In Turkey and
China, ships are dismantled in a more environmentally friendly way. It is
strictly monitored, so that as little toxic material as possible leaks into the
sea and labor laws are followed more often. This means less money can be made
from the scrapping, making Turkey and China less popular destinations for
shipbreakers.
When getting in
touch with Jafar Alam, former chairman of the Bangladesh Ship Breakers
Association, to get his side of the story, he abruptly hung up the phone. “I do
not want to discuss this topic,” he said.
Due to increased
international criticism over the years, a curtain has fallen over the industry.
It once was a popular tourist attraction, but now visitors are shunned. The
only way to get a sense of what the yards look like is by taking the boat of a
local fisherman and touring the scene from the seaside while disguised with a
head scarf. “They cannot steal the sea from us,” the fisherman said. The
closest we got to the yards was passing a ship that had drifted from the beach.
Workers waved enthusiastically when they spotted a foreigner in a motorboat,
until an angry man, presumably their boss, ordered the men to get back to work.
The life of the
workers is tough and often unjust. Few manage to escape. Most workers don’t
have a choice and have never experienced another life. They’re happy they have
a job which means they don’t starve to death and are able to feed their wives
and kids. Massood wishes he could escape, but deep down he knows that it's a
false hope. The most he can wish for is that his wife and kids don’t lose him
through an explosion.
Source: vice news. By Liza Jansen. 9 August 2014
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