Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Advocate Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Programs Director, Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) said that ship-breaking yards should be closed in the region as they are not environmentally safe, economically beneficial and socially productive.

She said that 107 ships were dismantled this year in Pakistan, as compared to seven ships last year.

The participants maintained that the ship-breaking yards must not be allowed to operate without proper environmental protection and sound management of asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, ozone-depleting substances, and a range of heavy metals.

They said the workers have to work in extremely unsafe, unhygienic and exploitative environment; they stressed upon the need to ensure welfare and provision of Personal Protective Equipment for the workers.

Dr Aurangzaib Khan of the Planning Commission of Pakistan said social and environmental aspects of ship-breaking industry require serious considerations at policy level.

Hasan said that although ship-breaking industry provides 25% of iron core along with livelihood to 18,000 workers, its environmental and social costs are unprecedented for Bangladesh.

She informed that coastal fishing in Chitagong is almost gone, 14 species of fish have gone extinct, thousand of acres of mangrove forest have been chopped off and the entire area has become chemically polluted with un-reparable damage to human health.

She said International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations of putting responsibility on ship breakers and not on ship owners, who are primarily responsible for contamination, is wrong. The western countries are evading responsibilities as the ships are first sent to places like Monrovia where they change flags and then are redirected to South Asian ports for ship-breaking; this helps them avoid environmental bindings and regulations, Hasan said.

“We need to send a clear message to the western world that our beaches are not dumping grounds for them, neither are the lives of our poor labourers a plaything,” she added.

A documentary “Iron Eaters” was also screened. Then Kanwar Iqbal, SDPI Research Associate, gave a presentation on the ship breaking industry, its issues and possible solutions.

He said that currently, the global centre for ship breaking and the recycling industry is located in South Asia, specifically in Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan who account for 70-80 percent of the international market for ship breaking.

This is mainly due to a shift seen in 1980 as a result of global environmental order when several countries enacted legislation to ban ship-breaking in their countries. This however, he said, comes with an unprecedented damage to nature and exploitation of workers at large.

He put forth recommendations such as workers registration, obligatory onsite pollution and safety control equipment, provision of Personal Protective Equipment to workers, drafting and implementing environmental health, safety procedures, Ship Recycling Protocol, training/capacity building, healthcare system and hazardous waste disposal thermal treatment facility.