Two years since Pakistan’s Gadani ship-breaking disaster, why are workers still dying?

Despite the Hong Kong Convention, dismantling ships for raw materials or parts remains a dangerous, lawless industry.

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Ship-breaking workers are often desperate for work no others will do, even if wages are slightly higher than the average sweatshop job. Photo: Studio Fasching

Published: 8:00am, 28 Oct 2018Updated: 8:49am, 28 Oct 2018

“I’VE seen two workers get killed and three injured by a piece of iron on a ship,” says Muhammed, who has worked for 10 years at the world’s most dangerous shipyard, Gadani, in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. “The workers weren’t aware of the dangling iron, as they were resting after doing some hard work in the yard, and all of a sudden that piece smashed into them.”

The three South Asian beach yards of Gadani, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Alang in India account for 80 per cent of the global ship-breaking trade – as well the lives of thousands of workers who have been killed or maimed by this most hazardous of occupations, which involves the demolition or dismantling of ships into parts and raw materials.

Even on their lunch break, ship-breakers are dicing with death. On November 1, 2016, up to 39 workers – the exact toll is unknown – died in a huge explosion on board an oil tanker in Gadani, the worst ship-breaking accident on record.

Two years later, almost to the day, two fires broke out this month in the yard, injuring seven, a macabre parallel that emphasises how nothing has changed in this dirty and dangerously unregulated industry.

Nasir Mansoor, the deputy general secretary of Pakistan’s National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), reveals the terrifying daily grind for Gadani workers – 60 per cent have fled war-torn Afghanistan border towns, desperate for work that no others will do, even if wages are slightly higher than the average sweatshop job.

Mansoor says: “They don’t have any choice but to work in very dangerous conditions. There are not even any medical facilities on site, no emergency services, not even safe drinking water. This is skilled work, but the maximum they earn is 1,000 rupees [HK$105], to do 12 hours a day, with no holidays.”

Some employers, keen to cut costs, do not bother cleaning the oil out of ships before the welding and cutting begins. Photo: Andreas Ragnarsson