Indian shipbreaking yards are death traps
by Sify.com
14 December 2005 (Paris) – Countries that send used ships for scrapping in India and other developing countries in Asia are condoning a system that claims thousands of workers' lives each year, rights groups charged on Tuesday.
Accidents, explosions and contamination from hazardous materials plague workers in many shipbreaking yards, according to a report issued in Paris by Greenpeace and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH).
"It's the law of the jungle, since the labour conditions offer workers no protection, no training nor supervision," charged Antoine Bernard, executive director of the FIDH.
Greenpeace activists had been protesting since Monday to prevent an asbestos-riddled, decommissioned French aircraft carrier from being shipped from southern France to India for scrapping.
Almost half of the world's ships end up in India -- which has the world's biggest shipbreaking yard, at Alang in the northwestern state of Gujarat -- for dismantling after their sailing lives are over, according to Greenpeace.
"In the Alang shipyard in India, with an estimated 40,000 workers, the ratio is one ship, one death," charged Ramapati Kumar, of Greenpeace India.
The workers, without education or qualification, travel hundreds of kilometres from some of the poorest regions of the country to work in the shipyards.
"In a single village, I counted as many as 22 widows, whose husbands had been killed in shipbreaking yards. Without counting crippling injuries and disease."
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