South Asia takes junked ships no one else will

Lung illnesses
Doctors in Alang say they see as many as 100 cases a week from the shipyards, many of whom have lung damage from toxic fumes and often end up back in their villages, too sick to work and too poor to afford medical care.

Indian ship-breakers say activists exaggerate the dangers, and claim accidents have dropped significantly. But so has their business.

They say their competitors in Bangladesh offer higher prices for vessels and don’t have to deal with tough regulations.

That means far fewer ships are coming to Alang. An industry that supported 40,000 workers five years ago in Alang now only employs 3,500, the ship-breakers said, and all but 26 of the 173 Indian ship-breaking sites sit idle.

“Nowadays, we are getting too much harassment from the NGOs and the government,” said Haresh Parmar of Shiv Ship Breaking Co. “We are doing nothing wrong. We are running a healthy recycling industry that provides many jobs.”

India’s yards are following the example set by Turkey and China in recent years. A hospital has been built for workers, winches and cranes have been introduced and workers now wear hard hats, boots and gloves. Ship inspections are on the rise and boats have to be empty of the fuel that is blamed for most fires — although activists say corruption sometimes allows ship-breakers to bypass these regulations.

Work on maritime pact
The safety push comes as the International Maritime Organization is drafting an agreement to be signed possibly in 2008 that would require ships to provide lists of all hazardous materials onboard and recycling yards to meet a set of safety standards.

Countries that sign the pact would be barred from sending their ships to be scrapped in unlicensed yards, according to a draft seen by The AP.

Greenpeace says the guidelines should require ships to be decontaminated in their home ports. The industry says that would be costly and impractical.

But the human price of ship-breaking is evident in Adapada, a village of 5,000 along the country’s east coast that for two decades has exported many of its men to the Alang yards 620 miles away.

At least two dozen residents of this isolated farming village have died in the shipyards, according to village leaders and surviving relatives, while others have lost arms or legs.

Dilip Pradham, 60, suffers debilitating headaches and, until recently, was bedridden following a 1996 gas explosion in Alang. He no longer works and is forced to beg.

His daughter, Phula, says he was the breadwinner, and without his income the family often goes hungry and can’t afford a dowry for one of its marriage-age daughters.

“We’ve lost our father,” Phula said.

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