Just over one month after the deadliest
accident in shipbreaking history devastated the Gadani shipbreaking yard in
Pakistan, the sprawling facility has reopened with no tangible improvement to
health and safety provisions and nothing in the way of compensation for
affected workers and their families.
On 1 November, a floating oil production
tanker, ACES (IMO #8021830), caught fire killing at least 28 workers, leaving
scores missing and more than 50 people injured.
According to Shipbreaking Platform, a
coalition of environmental, human rights and labour rights organisations
working towards safe and clean ship recycling, “the blast was so strong that
parts of the ship were blown up to two kilometres away and the fire took more
than three days to extinguish”.
The tanker had recently changed from an
Indonesian flag to a Djiboutian flag before its arrival in Gadani; this is
common practise in an industry where unscrupulous ship owners go to great
lengths to avoid liability for the prevalence of unsafe and
environmentally-unfriendly shipbreaking practices.
Shipbreaking is one of the most dangerous
jobs in the world. Workers and labour rights activists had been pressing for
the drastic improvement in safety measures at Gadani – the world’s third
largest shipbreaking yard after Chittagong in Bangladesh and Alang in India –
long before last month’s accident, but to no avail.
In May 2016, for example, striking shipbreakers
called on the government of Pakistan to enforce the Hong Kong International
Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships and the
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes.
Nasir Mansour, secretary general of the
National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) told Equal Times: “And just two days
before this tragic accident we held a protest demonstration in Karachi against
the appalling state of affairs at Gadani.”
‘’On a daily basis, at least two labourers
are sustaining serious injuries and 28 labourers are losing their lives every
year due to the hazardous working environment and dearth of rescue or safety
means,” he said.
Poor pay, dangerous work, no
protection
Some 6,000 labourers work at Gadani in
dangerous conditions with no contracts, no job security, few health and safety
provisions, and for wages of between 450 (US$4.30) and 1450 (US13.80) rupees
per day.
Situated about 50 kilometres from Pakistan’s
commercial capital of Karachi, Gadani contains 132 shipbreaking units along 10
kilometres of beachfront and is thought to salvage more than a million tonnes
of steel every year, most of which is sold domestically.
Workers dismantle ships with scant safety
equipment in poorly ventilated areas where they are exposed to harmful
substances.
Accidents and burns are commonplace but with
no access to clean water, decent sanitation or medical facilities, injured
workers have to travel to Karachi to go to a clinic or hospital, and usually at
their own cost. When Gadani reopened last week, none of this had changed.
On the first Sunday after the accident, some
10,000 people gathered in Gadani in solidarity with the victims and to protest
the government’s failure to guarantee adequate compensation for affected workers
and their families.
As of the first week of December, workers had
still not received any compensation.
The NTUF is calling for three million rupees
(approximately US$28,600) for each worker who died and 500,000 rupees
(approximately US$4760) for each injured worker, but the government is yet to
confirm how much will be paid out.
Boost for the local steel
industry
Just a few days after the deadly accident,
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended a lavish inauguration ceremony
marking the acceleration of global trade with China via Pakistan’s brand-new
Gwadar port.
Sharif’s entire speech was focused on glorifying
the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that aims to
link China’s north-western Xinjiang region with Gwadar via a number of highways
and rail links.
On the Gadani tragedy, Sharif – whose family
owns the Ittefaq steel giant – limited his words and actions to the formation
of a high-level committee to investigate the cause of the fire and the
possibility of criminal liability.
Observers say that the temporarily closure of
Gadani only served to stimulate the demand for locally produced steel,
benefitting industrialists like Sharif, while producing no tangible safety
improvements.
Meanwhile, the thousands of informal workers
who depend on Gadani for their livelihoods were adversely affected by the
shutdown. Bashir Mehmoodani, president of Pakistan’s Ship Breaking Workers
Union, told Equal Times. “Many labourers have already moved out in search for
other manual jobs in different parts of the country.”
Workers at Gadani say that many shipbreaking
operators import tankers containing fuel, which is then sold on the black
market to compensate for the high duties and taxes imposed on the industry.
The intensity of the 1 November blast and the
quality of smoke afterwards suggests that there was a quantity of fuel in the
tanker, but workers say that they were unaware.
“Workers in this industry are exploited
everywhere [in Pakistan],” said Mansour. “The laws for minimum wages, social
security and fixed workings hours are not respected at Gwadar. In Gadani, the
life of labourers is under direct threat, with literally no safety or ground
rules in place.’’
But until the government of Pakistan shows
the political will to institute radical reforms to protect the lives and
improve the wages of vulnerable, underpaid shipbreaking workers, so it shall continue.
Source: equal
times. 15 December 2016
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