While outwardly against the procedure, 14
ships of its ships were being broken up on open beaches in India and Bangladesh.
The Danish oil and shipping company Maersk
finds itself in turbulent seas following the revelations that 14 of its ships
were scrapped on notorious beaches in Bangladesh and India in 2013 and 2014.
Outwardly, the company blasted the use of the
scrapping beaches, but meanwhile it was reportedly earning money by pushing a
German shipping company to try and get the best steel price at the very same
beaches for 14 of its ships, according to confidential contracts Politiken, TV2
News and DanWatch are in possession of.
“In this agreement we can clearly see that
our influence has gone in the wrong direction, and that form of influence is
not commendable. It’s something we really shouldn’t be doing.” Trond Westlie,
the CFO of Maersk, told Politiken.
Maersk negotiated with the German company MPC
Capital about ending a contract regarding the 14 ships that Maersk had
chartered from them.
Germans under duress
Maersk wanted to take the ships off the
market to be scrapped, and as part of the contract MPC was under commitment to
get the highest possible price per tonne of scrapped steel. That pushed the
Germans towards the notorious scrapping beaches.
Of the 14 ships, 11 were broken up on an open
beach in India, while the remaining three were scrapped in Bangladesh.
It’s not the first time that Danish ships
have been found on the contentious scrapping beaches, which employ impoverished
workers in dangerous conditions for pay that can be as low as 2.5 kroner an
hour.
According to ship scrapping watchdog website
offthebeach.org in 2014, 11 Danish shipping companies and subsidiaries sent 18
ships to be scrapped at the notorious scrapyards in India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh from 2010-2014.
Source: cph
post. 17 October 2016
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