Safety Management for Bangladeshi Ship Breaking Industries Perspective
Ship breaking is the process of dismantling an obsolete vessel’s structure for scrapping or disposal conducted at a beach, recycling the ship’s structure. It is a challenging process, due to the structural complexity of the ships and the involvement of many environmental, safety, and health issues. Six hundred end-of-life ships are broken annually without cleaning by the owner prior to export, and only a very few cleaned before scrapping. More than 3,000 ships with the toxic wastes have been exported over the last five years to Asian ship breaking yards and Bangladesh is the leading ship breaking country is south Asia. Although the steel is recycled, the toxic substances such as PCBs, metals, asbestos, lead, waste oil, TBT, etc enter into the environment and into the bodies of the workers. A new EU report on the phasing out and scrapping of single hull oil tankers concluded that 2,200 oil tankers would have to be scrapped after the end of their commercial life by the year 2012.Bangladesh is dependent on ship scrapping for fulfilling its domestic demands for steel and iron. Ship scrapping is not regulated by environmental law, nor is there care for the health and safety of the workers. Workers of Bangladesh break up European vessels with no protection from explosions, asbestos or a cocktail of toxic chemicals contained in the ship. Over the last 20 years more than 400 workers have been killed and about 6000 were seriously injured that indicates the highest accidents and casualties at the yards in the region. Workers cut down steel plates continuously without uniforms, protective gloves, boots and goggles. The Main objective of this paper is to Identifying hazards associated with ship breaking, to Calculate risk level according to those hazards and recommendation to ensure safety for the ship breaking workers.
