What's the best way to dispose of an "old lady"? Should she
be dumped on a beach and broken up by rough hands in terrible conditions or
should she be taken in a more sedate fashion to a reputable place to be
dismantled in an orderly fashion?
The question is being debated in the shipping industry where an
"old lady" is the usual term for a vessel which has come to the end
of its days.
One of the world's biggest cargo companies has just decided to stop
sending its ships to be broken up on Bangladesh's beaches where ultra-cheap
labour does the job in tough, dangerous conditions.
It is back-breaking, dangerous work done by bare-footed people with
virtually no medical help for the injured, according to one body campaigning
for better conditions in Bangladesh - and one in ten of the workers is under
the age of 18.
An average of two workers a month die on the beaches of Chittagong
alone, says the group, Young Power in Social Action - and in April this year,
four died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
But the difficulty is that sending old vessels to yards with higher
standards of safety is expensive - and it may also deprive the Bangladeshi
workers of even the pittance they currently earn in wages.
The board of the German company, Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's biggest
operators of container ships, has just had that debate and is switching the
disposal of its old ships from Bangladesh to China - where labour standards and
costs are higher.
Executives balanced the higher cost against the morality of using
low-cost workers in appalling conditions and opted for a breaker's yard near
the mouth of the Yangtze in China instead.
"We decided we didn't want to use the beaches for scrapping our
vessels," says a spokesman.
 |
Workers earn
around $4 a day for breaking up a ship
|
Boom or bust
It is a dilemma. The switch pushes up the cost by up to $2m (£1.2m) a
vessel, depending on how far the ship needs to travel to the final yard and
whether it could take a useful cargo on the way - for example, ships sailing to
China return empty containers, and that's a lucrative cargo.
When a shipping firm decides a ship is no longer economic, it either
sells the vessel to the secondary market - in other words another company - or
directly to the breaker's yard. What the buyer of the ship does then depends on
the state of the world economy.
In boom years, demand to extend the life of ships is high so fewer get
broken up. When demand for shipping is slack, the glut of vessels means they
have a relatively higher scrap value, so they usually end up getting beached at
high tide in Pakistan, India or Bangladesh where 70% of old ships are broken
up.
The switch to higher cost disposal means that the beaches of
Bangladesh, particularly at Chittagong, the country's industrial centre on the
coast, may get less business.
 |
Western
firms should invest in proper breaker's yards in Bangladesh, say some
|
'They get sick and die'
One of the people there who is campaigned for better standards is not
mourning the loss of the contracts. Muhammed Ali Shahin told the BBC that the
labourers worked in terrible conditions, and the pay for work that kills simply
can't be worth it.
"They earn about $4 a day but for the danger of the job, it's
nothing because they get sick and they die. They have poison in their bodies
because of the pollutants."
He thinks the better solution would be for Western companies to invest
in proper ship-breaking yards in Bangladesh.
"Shipbreaking should be taken off the beach and ships should be
pre-cleaned before they arrive here," he says.
"Worker rights are violated. They work 12 to 16 hours a day. They
aren't provided with safety protection. They dismantle ships without masks and
with hammers. They inhale toxic fumes. Workers are dying virtually every day.
"Environmental rights are violated. The ships are being cut on
the beach and beaches aren't made for this kind of business so there are toxic
materials in the ocean."
The real difficulty is the poverty of the economy.
For a rural peasant in the north of Bangladesh, the move south to the
coast and jobs like ship-breaking is attractive - low-paid, back-breaking work
on a beach is better than even lower paid back-breaking agricultural work.
 |
Bangladesh's
economy depends on the steel taken from scrapped ships
|
Decision dilemma
It's not just the desperate labourers in Bangladesh who lose income
when the work goes to China, but the whole economy. In the industry,
ship-breaking is called re-cycling - the aim is to take everything from a
vessel which can be re-used.
Nearly all a ship's structure is made of steel and Bangladesh is
dependent on this as a source of steel for its domestic industry.
This obviously presents a dilemma for Bangladesh - higher labour
standards may mean higher costs and so less business. The dilemma for the
companies is different. Should they always go for the lowest costs, as some
share-holders might expect?
Hapag-Lloyd and also Maersk before it, has decided that higher labour
and environmental standards justify a bigger hit to its bottom line. Firms are
also aware that using ultra-cheap labour can mean bad publicity and
"reputational damage" for a company.
The industry thinks that imposing internationally acceptable standards
is the way forward, so that a series of conventions have been agreed to
stipulate the minimum standards acceptable, and so remove the advantage some
companies have by using the cheapest labour.
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| Shipbreaking employs thousands in Bangladesh, despite the dangers |
Human cost
But whatever the economics of ship-breaking on the beaches of
Bangladesh, you can't doubt the human cost.
The pressure group, Shipbreaking Platform, which campaigns for better
standards cites the case of 16-year-old Khorshed Alam who was crushed to death
when a metal plate fell on him.
He had just left school to support his family even though his pay was
less than $3 for a 12-hour day.
Now all his family has is the grief - and the memory of a teenager
doing a man's job in appalling conditions.
Source: BBC. By Stephen Evans. 31
August 2014
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