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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Bangladeshi breakers to fight High Court ruling

Liz McCarthy and Shirish Nadkarni - Thursday 19 March 2009

 

BANGLADESHI ship recyclers and cash buyers from the scrapping industry have reacted with frustration to news that the Bangladeshi High Court has ordered the closure, within two weeks, of yards operating without environmental clearance.
“This is not an order that has legs,” said Anil Sharma, president and chief executive of cash buyer GMS. 
“This one is probably going to backfire on them, because it has really infuriated this industry.” 
Dr Sharma, whose company handles one third of all ships scrapped, said that it is thought the order would be overturned. 
The ruling was unopposed because no industry experts knew the case was going to court. The Bangladeshi Ship Breaker’s Association reacted quickly to the ruling and yesterday filed a petition to appeal. 
“It would appear that the judges have been totally misled by environmentalists and lawyer groups, and have given a judgment without realising the full implications of their order,” said BSBA president Jaffar Alam. 
On Wednesday, the court ruled on a petition filed by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, including an order that no ship on Greenpeace’s dangerous ships list be allowed in to the country. 
The court also banned end-of-life vessels from coming to Bangladesh without having been pre-cleaned of hazardous materials, such as asbestos, heavy metals and oil sludges. 
Creating two steps within the ship recycling process was not the way to approach the disposal of hazardous waste, said Dr Sharma. “That is far more problematic, maybe even more dangerous than doing it at the yard where the ship is already anchored.” 
He said that the order defied “commercial sense or logic” at a time when the issue of overcapacity loomed over the industry. 
In the last four months, the number of ships sold for scrap has soared, with GMS reportedly selling one ship every day. Last month, Dr Sharma predicted that over 1,000 ships would be scrapped this year, as owners hit by the financial collapse sold off older tonnage. “There is no let off; it’s still the same volumes,” he said today. 
If the order was implemented it would mean the end of the shipbreaking in Bangladesh, said Mr Alam. “That simply cannot be allowed to happen.” 
It is estimated that around 250,000 people are directly or indirectly employed by the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh.

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