Brussels, 20 July 2016 - The European
Community Shipowners’ Association’s (ECSA) has published a report on their
visit to the Alang shipbreaking yards in India last April. The NGO Shipbreaking
Platform criticises the report for ignoring the many grave shortcomings of the
beaching method, including its inability to ensure containment of pollutants
and to guarantee occupational safety, and for simply echoing the yard owners'
one-sided account of working and living conditions in Alang.
“This is not the report of a fact-finding
mission, but a promotion brochure for the Indian beaching yards. There are no
solutions provided to the serious concerns we have raised with ECSA, and no
demands for improvement”, says Patrizia Heidegger, Executive Director of the
NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “The true intent is to gain support for the most
convenient solution for ship owners: the continuation of the low-cost method of
beaching that allows for maximum profit for shipping lines”.
The damaging environmental impacts of
breaking ships in the intertidal zone of a beach are well known: slag, toxic
paint particles and debris including metal scrap and plastics are released into
the environment when the ship is torched and large metal pieces are simply
dropped onto the sand or into the sea. Alarming levels of air, water and soil
contamination at beaching yards are well documented [1].
Whilst some yards in Alang have cemented the
areas where they conduct secondary cutting, all yards in Alang conduct the
primary cutting of the ship in the intertidal zone. ECSA argues that pollution
in the intertidal zone can be controlled by only letting ‘clean’ blocks fall
into the sea or onto the beach. ECSA cannot, however, explain how blocks are
actually 'cleaned' and where the chemicals necessary in this process end up.
The contamination by toxic anti-fouling paints that are accumulated in the
sediments is completely ignored by ECSA, as are the difficulties of preventing
and remediating oil spills in the intertidal zone.
Instead, ECSA heavily relies on the
Statements of Compliance (SoC) with the Hong Kong Convention which have been
issued by consultants, including by the classification societies ClassNK and
RINA in their private capacity, to some of the yards in Alang, in order to
claim that beaching practices are sound. These SoCs, however, only look at
procedures and not the actual performance of the yards. Environmental
monitoring is required by Indian law and whilst most yards in Alang may conduct
such monitoring – and thus tick a box in the checklist for the SoC –
astonishingly, the findings of the local companies hired by the yards to
conduct the samplings have hardly found any contamination, if at all. Apart
from such meaningless monitoring of environmental impacts, ECSA also easily
refers to the environmental monitoring of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board
(GPCB). The data available on the GPCB’s website is, however, far from detailed
and several years old.
The ship owners’ association is also very
gullible when it comes to assessing downstream waste management in Alang. Even
though the association knows that Indian law allows for the resale of
asbestos-containing material and that there is no incinerator for PCBs in
India, ECSA simply trusts that the yard owners will ensure environmentally
sound waste management on a voluntary basis, even if this creates higher costs
for the yards.
Likewise, ECSA’s account of the social
welfare system that yard owners have reportedly “voluntarily” put in place
raises concerns. First and foremost, workers in India have a legal right to
most of the mentioned benefits. Second, ECSA has not checked whether informal
migrant workers, who make up the large majority of Alang workers, actually
benefit from social welfare. A report from the renowned Tata Institute for
Social Science reported dire working conditions in Alang, including the lack of
contracts, pension schemes and insurance. Most workers in Alang do not have
access to decent accommodation but live in makeshift shacks. The yard owners
have been promising for many years that accommodation blocks will be set up;
however, the large majority of workers currently remain in roadside slums while
proper housing is only slowly being built for a small number of the total
workforce.
Instead of consulting the trade unions or
researchers who have looked into these important questions, ECSA blindly trusts
the yard owners who misleadingly portray obligations they actually have as
employers under Indian law anyway as laudable corporate social responsibility.
And, while ECSA praises the 'willingness and openness of the Indian yard owners
to receive the delegation', Indian and international NGOs were excluded from
participating to the visit and ECSA did not deem it necessary to meet with
trade unions and workers themselves. “It is particularity cynical when ECSA
reports that the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) - a Government body that actively
keeps NGOs and other critical voices outside the yards - was ‘liaising with
numerous social and environmental NGOs’: GMB does not even answer an email when
we request a copy of the accident statistics which they have to keep, and does
not have a meaningful exchange with any of the civil society organisations that
have been working on the issue for many years” says Patrizia Heidegger.
Shipbreaking is a heavy industry with a high
risk of accident. Though ECSA found that there is only a rudimentary first aid
centre in Alang and no functional hospital in the close vicinity, the ship
owners’ association does not demand an immediate remedy to the unacceptable
situation. The GMB’s accident statistics that it shared with ECSA show that
between May 2015 and January 2016 at least 5 workers were killed in the yards.
During this period the local steel market was very weak and many Alang yards
were forced to close. The workforce was at that time reported to have been
reduced to less than 5.000 workers. The accident rate is thus alarmingly high,
notwithstanding that the GMB statistics do not include severe injuries and
maimed workers. The many toxic materials found within the ship structure pose
further serious health risks to the workers, and while ECSA reports that there are
medical check-ups for workers in Alang, it is doubtful whether specific tests
such as for heavy metal poising are conducted and that occupational diseases
are properly detected and reported.
“EU law-makers who have sought to regulate
the substandard practices of European ship owners, by disapproving the beaching
method, have been accused by ECSA of being ‘neo-colonial’. While the regulation
of transnational business is actually a way to curb post-colonial exploitation
structures perpetuated by European businesses, what is truly neo-colonial is
ECSA's acceptance of lower environmental, health and safety standards for
people and the environment in India,” says Patrizia Heidegger. “If European
ship owners really want to be a driving force for sustainable development in
India then why do they not ensure investment in and knowledge transfer for
state-of-the-art ship recycling off the beach?”.
NOTES
[1] See Science for Environment Policy
Thematic Issue June 2016 on Ship Recycling: Reducing Human and environmental
impacts
CONTACT
Patrizia Heidegger
Executive Director
NGO Shipbreaking Platform
+32 2 609 44 19
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