US Navy draws flak for ship breaks in India

WASHINGTON, Dec 15: The US Navy has come under attack for sending its old ships for breaking at South Asian yards, including `Alang' on Guj...

WASHINGTON, Dec 15: The US Navy has come under attack for sending its old ships for breaking at South Asian yards, including `Alang’ on Gujarat coast in India. Amidst reports that conditions prevailing at ship-breaking yards in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were environmentally hazardous and harmful to workers, US Senator Barbara Mikulski has urged the Navy to stop sending old ships for breaking in these countries and ensure that similar operations in America are conducted under safe conditions.

The Baltimore Sun, after a survey of the conditions in which workers break up ships along a six-mile stretch of polluted beach at Alang, 40 miles from Bhavnagar in Gujarat, reported dangerous working conditions and non-existent environmental safeguards.

The paper, which also surveyed the yards at Baltimore in the US and other areas, said “American yards, dependent on low-paid Mexican immigrant workers, have sprung up in the ports from Baltimore to Brownsville, Texas, since the Navy began selling off ships at the end of the cold war.”Conditions in India, the paper claimed, are even worse. Workers are killed and maimed and “no one seems to care”.

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The Senator, in a statement, expressed concern about export of ships to South Asia where “working conditions are extremely dangerous and environmental regulations virtually non-existent.”

About poor working conditions at the US yards, the paper said defence department made no effort to oversee the scrapping, even though it’s the Navy which owns vessels.

“Labourers have been working in air polluted with asbestos dust. At times they had no respirators and other standard equipments for asbestos work,” the paper said.

The Senator said that the Defence Department must ensure that its old ships are scrapped in a responsible manner. “Let’s see if we can either shut it down or clean it up,” Mikulski said about the scrapping programme.