OUR MAN IN
CHITTAGONG BANGLADESH’S SHIP GRAVEYARDS ARE PROFITABLE, BUT DANGEROUS, ENTERPRISES
N
ine men, all wearing dirty button-down shirts, are pulling a metal rope aggressively while chanting a Bangla “heave-ho!” The rope slackens and tightens when the men throw their bodies backward in an attempt to get leverage on the metal ship part they’re pulling toward the shore. The part is 10 times their size. It’s rusted, decrepit, and its prior purpose is hard to identify, but they pull it anyway. This giant ship part is going to make somebody a great deal of money. The ship breaking yards of Chittagong span the Bay of Bengal’s shores and are home to hundreds of ships, thousands of men, and millions — sometimes hundreds of millions — of dollars in gain. The 8,000-tonne German ship that is being dismantled piece by piece was purchased by the yard’s manager and investors for $40 million. Its metal parts will be broken down, thrown into a furnace, and melted into highly profitable steel rods, while everything else – from the ship’s toilets to its bedspreads – will be
sold in market stands on the road out of the yards. The economy of this bayside city thrives off the ship breaking industry and employment has steadily been on the rise since many of the yards opened, this one in 1986. While it is understood that all quick-money industries inevitably have a dark side, the ship breaking industry has many. While I watched men scale 50foot hollowed-out ships barefoot and shirtless, a yard manager explained how his yard is run. The workers – none of them are younger than 18 – work eight-hour shifts, and they get paid a dollar a day. He says it with a straight face, yet I find it all so hard to believe. While I walk around taking pictures, adolescent faces smile back at me and their elder companions look worn and tired. The life of a ship breaker – dismantling enormous ships with only a blowtorch and rudimentary tools – is not glamorous or lucrative. A man fell to his death from the top of a 60-foot ocean liner in mid-August and is only one
of at least 50 who will die from the profession this year. But as the yard manager says, “ship breaking is creating jobs”. What it is also creating, however, is an influx of environmental issues. When the ships come into port to be disassembled, they do so at full speed, crashing toward shore and leaving toxic waste behind them. In order to be approved for dismantling, the authorities have to check for hazardous materials first. However, corruption is rampant; the yard manager said no ship had ever been denied. Hazardous chemicals are left to poison the waters, while managers and investors pull in profit. All around, there are men using blowtorches without masks, operating machinery without gloves, and trudging through sand and muck that is littered with rusted slabs of scrap metal. I ask this yard’s manager if purported new health and safety regulations will help. “ The workers have little money, little health. We are changing this so they can have good futures.”
Dayna Evans is an American writer based in Bangladesh. 37