AT least 60 workers were killed and 125 injured in the country’s ship-breaking yard accidents in the last five and a half years. As reported in a national daily, absence of safety equipment and a healthy work environment, inadequate first aid, medical service and utter negligence of owners have been claiming lives or seriously injuring many workers in ship breaking yards over the years. The workers are usually poor and uneducated, so that the death of the workers do not prompt the government or any authority for ensuring the workers’ safety. The workers, who provide a major portion of the demand of iron products for the expanding urbanization, should have workplace safety and all protection.
Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, a rights campaigner, stated that negligence of owners is the prime cause for repeated accidents in the ship-breaking yards. The September 5 accident, which left four workers dead, occurred due to a cylinder blast in the workers’ changing room when some workers entered there with burning cigarettes. Years back, a High Court Division Bench directed the government to ensure workplace safety of workers at ship-breaking yards. According to the HC verdict, nobody can enter a ship-breaking yard with a burning cigarette, but the owners of the yards did not comply with the order, showing sheer negligence to the HC order. The HC also directed that independent inquiry committees must probe accidents in ship-breaking yards but the directive has never been followed.
Meanwhile, injured and amputated workers said that shortage of personal protective equipment – helmets, gloves, boots, safety glasses, flame resisting clothes and flashlight — and safety equipment — fire extinguishers, first aid box and oxygen cylinders — are resulting in high casualties. As per international rules, ships must be cleaned of toxic materials before they are brought to ship breaking yards for dismantling. But most of the owners don’t follow the directive. The rules also stipulate that owners must train the workers in ship-breaking before employing them, but the majority of the owners hire unskilled workers. A training center was set up at Halishahar of Chittagong a few years ago, but it is not operating now. However, Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association claimed that they provide adequate safety gears to the workers, but the data of causalities do not support the claim.
The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishment, which is assigned to inspect and ensure compliance of safety rules, complains of a shortage of adequate manpower strength to oversee the ground conditions or correct irregularities. The government must equip the department concerned with an adequate number of inspectors and the yard owners must comply with the rules that could ensure safety of the workers engaged at the ship-breaking yards. Human-life should not be so cheap or valueless in any way.
