THE death toll from a fire in Pakistan’s Gadani shipbreaking yard rose to 21 last Thursday, with as many as 150 still trapped in the burning ship.
A fire was raging aboard an oil tanker in the shipbreaking yard of Gadani, Pakistan, with up to 150 workers trapped inside. A gas container exploded inside the oil tanker on Tuesday, and firefighters were battling to control the blaze on Thursday. Efforts to rescue the trapped workers have been in vain, and firefighters lacked the foam needed to tackle chemical fires. 70 workers are in hospital, 15 in critical condition with severe burns.
The National Trade Union Federation of Pakistan (NTUF) has called a three day strike and period of mourning at the shipyards, which employ about 9,000 workers. NTUF intends to file murder charges against the ship owners and contractor, and to file a constitutional petition in the higher court against the responsible government departments, including labour, social security and the environment.
The oil tanker was built in 1982 in Japan, and arrived at plot no. 54 at the Gadani yard on 15 October, with 250 workers enlisted to dismantle it. The ship had Indonesian owners before being sold to the Gadani shipbreaking company Ghafoor, but changed its registration to Djibouti weeks before arrival. The name of the ship was changed at this point from Federal 1 to Aces.
The blast occurred due to the presence of inflammable and toxic gases inside the fuel tank of the ship. Workers were forced to start the dismantling process before the fuel tank could be cleaned of leftover fuel. The breaking of a ship is done with a gas wielding process, which led to this disaster. The explosion was so intense that heavy metal sheets were seen flying into the air, and later found up to two kilometres away.
Nasir Mansoor of NTUF said: ‘Accidents like this have become routine. Gadani is not only a graveyard of ships but also of labourers.
‘The responsibility of these deaths lies on the shoulders of the ship breakers. The authorities, including police and the labour department, have colluded with the yard owners to let them get away with these murders. The mighty ship breakers rule and workers are treated as if they were not even human.’
The NTUF has campaigned for the rights of shipbreaking workers for a decade, most recently on October 30th, when workers demanded their right to occupational health and safety. In the wake of this latest disaster, the NTUF is demanding a dramatic change in safety measures in the yards, as well as compensation for the injured and the families of the dead workers.
The deputy commissioner of the Lasbela district has ordered that all work at Gadani stop. Police have arrested the contractor, and ordered the arrest of the ship owner and the chairman of the shipbreakers’ association. IndustriALL Global Union has written to the prime minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, to urge the country to ratify the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.
IndustriALL general secretary Valter Sanches said: ‘Consistent negligence of safety measures and a disregard for the rule of law by employers and authorities has made Gadani a killing field. It is not acceptable that the shipbreaking workers in Pakistan have to risk their life every day to earn a livelihood.’ Gadani is the world’s third largest shipbreaking yard, made up of 132 plots located a 10 km long beachfront at Gadani, Pakistan, about 50 kilometres northwest of Karachi.
• Heirs of the Baldia Town factory fire victims staged a rally on November 1st from Regal Chowk to the Karachi Press Club and reiterated their earlier demand about full compensation instead of instalments. The event was jointly held by the National Trade Union Federation and the Association of the Affectees of Baldia tragedy.
Families present at the rally demanded that they be paid the recently agreed upon compensation in full. The families were referring to a recent agreement between German retailer, KiK, and labour unions in Geneva in September. According to the agreement, KiK agreed to pay $5 million in instalments.
The agreement came after the German government asked the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to mediate between KiK and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) and to decide how the compensation will be distributed. The German retailer had earlier paid $1m as compensation to the heirs of the victims who died in the fire at Baldia Town’s Ali Enterprises on September 11th, 2012. Eventually, the German retailer was accused by the labour organisations for not respecting other similar agreements.
A legal battle between the labour organisations and the German retailer led to the involvement of the German government wanting to settle the issue amicably and ethically. A decision to include the ILO as mediator was accepted by all parties in April this year.
A fact-finding commission of the ILO recently visited Karachi and presented recommendations to better working conditions for labourers in factories across Karachi. However, during a meeting on the premises of the Pakistan Medical Association on Sept 25th, the victims’ families had refused to accept the condition of getting the compensation in instalments.
The demand coincided with the arrival of the ILO commission on Sept 26th. Saeeda Bibi, head of the Association of the Affectees of Baldia Tragedy, said that the demand was due to the ‘long-drawn process of compensation disbursement’. This was reiterated by the families, who congregated outside the KPC. They added that it would be ‘better to receive the compensation in one go than to be held back in case the German retailer decides to back off yet again.’
• More than 1,100 people were killed and more than 2,500 injured in the Rana Plaza disaster, in 2013, a disaster that finally focussed attention on the appalling conditions endured by Bangladesh’s poorly-paid garment workers, says UK union Unison.
After the disaster the Bangladesh government decided to make it easier to set up unions, which would give workers a collective voice against such treatment – and allow them to resist entering another Rana Plaza. At the same time, retailers signed the 2013 Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally-binding agreement designed to improve conditions.
Yet not a great deal has changed. Despite the Accord, which has led to some safety improvements, many workers are still working long hours in godforsaken buildings that are over-heated, without proper fire exits and with bars on the windows. All for pitifully low wages.
And despite the trade union law, unions still face a daily battle to be recognised by employers. Many activists are harassed, intimidated and physically attacked. Since June 2014 Unison’s International Development Fund has been working with UK campaigners Labour Behind the Label to support the Bangladesh Revolutionary Garment Workers’ Federation (BRGWF), one of the trade union federations set up after Rana Plaza.
With the union’s financial help, BRGWF has opened a small office in Gazipur, outside Dhaka, one of Bangladesh’s fastest-growing garment industry hubs. The BRGWF has also held negotiations with factory owners with regard to wages and safety concerns. BRGWF president Salauddin Shapon and the rest of the team at the Gazipur branch have organised training programmes for garment workers in law, safety, grievance processing, working against the discrimination of female workers, the forming of unions and much more.
Since the Tazreen and Rana plaza tragedies salaries have improved a little. But they are still extremely low, he says. Sumona Akter, an organiser for BRGWF Gazipur says that female garment workers typically wake up at 5.30am to cook for their families for the day, before leaving the house at 7am to start work at 8am. If they’re late their employers can deduct money from their wages. After a 10 to 16-hour day at the factory she’ll return home to cook dinner, wash clothes and carry out other tasks for her family.
Unions are very much needed. But, although the BRGWF has overseen the registration of a handful of new unions, there is still a long way to go for union rights. Salauddin has seen factory workers lose their jobs because they’ve joined a union, and have even been threatened or beaten by ‘gangsters’ hired by their employers.
