Speakers Tuesday stressed the need for necessary measures and a proper execution of the Ship Breaking and Ship Recycling Rules- 2011 to stop casualties in the industry.
The ship breaking industry was abandoned for a long time since 2010 due to the deaths of 43 workers and environment pollution following a directive of the High Court (HC) and it started functioning again from 2012 immediately after formulation of some rules, the speakers said at a press conference at the roundtable auditorium of Dhaka Reporters’ Unity (DRU) here.
Coalition of Local NGOs, Bangladesh (CLNB) organized the press conference with its Chairman Harunur Rashid in the chair. Among others, labour leader Shahjahan Kabir Zahir, director of Human Development Centre of Proshika and senate member of Dhaka University Nargis Jahan Banu, president of Bangladesh Primary Teachers Association Shamsul Alam, executive general secretary of CLNB Shamim Reza, labour leaders Sahida Sarker, Kamrunnahar and Shaheen Zaman took part in the conference.
For lack of execution of the rules, they said, “A total of 45 workers have been killed and hundreds of others injured after the industry resumed functioning in 2012.”
Though there is a rule to appoint a safety officer panel at shipyards to look after safety of the workers, there is no such panel, they said adding that no shipyard is yet to get the approval of Ship Recycling Facilities Plan (SRFP) from the Industries Ministry, which is necessary to import ships.
In accordance with the rule 3.9, it is necessary for the workers to take training from a government designated training institute to work at a shipyard, but most of the workers in the industry did not take the training from such institutes as only 4908 out of two lakh workers were imparted training from such institutes, they said.
