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HAZARDS OF SHIP-BREAKING IN BHATIARY, SITAKUNDA

Blasts kill 700, injure 10,000 in 3 decades

STAFF CORRESPONDENT, Ctg
About 700 workers were killed and 10,000 others injured in explosions in ship-breaking yards at Bhatiary and Sitakunda in last three decades, and 1,000 of the injured became disabled, speakers said at a seminar here yesterday.
Poor safety measures, random use of old method in dismantling gigantic ships are the main reasons for explosions, they said.
Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela) organised the seminar on "Workers Security in Ship Breaking Yards in Bangladesh: Legal Norms and
Reality" at the Engineers Institute here.
Director (programme) of Bela Syeda Rizwana Hasan chaired it.
City Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury was present as chief guest and Bela official Md Saiful Karim presented the keynote paper at the seminar.
Noted scientist Prof Dr Jamal Nazrul Islam, Dr Shafiq Haider Chowdhury, consultant of Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association (BSBA) Capt (retd) Muin Chowdhury and a worker --Mahbub Alam were among the discussants.
Mayor Mohiuddin emphasised joint efforts both by yard owners and workers to ensure safety and promised to build a multi-storied hospital at the ship-breaking area.
"Successive governments made lot of commitments but didn't fulfilled even a single," Mohiuddin alleged.
"Workers are forced to work amid risk everyday, which can't be acceptable."
Other speakers alleged that ship-breaking is damaging flora and fauna, posing a great threat to coastal and marine ecology and posing heath hazard to local people.
The speakers said the industry is
causing soil pollution, contamination of seawater and wrecking havoc on aquatic resources. Huge quantities of waste oil remaining as residue in scrapped oil tankers spill into the sea, creating pollution.
Saiful Karim in his keynote paper said the yards owners are violating labour laws. Workers are forced to work for more than 16 hours a day.
There is no register book for workers, he said.
Saiful said most of the workers come from monga- affected northern part of the country and many of them sell their labour in advance to the local broker and then face the horrible experience of a modern form of slavery in the yards.
"The illiterate and non-local workers of the yards are hardly enrolled or even if enrolled, they are enrolled with fake names and addresses to protect the management in case of accidents," he said in the paper.