The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : A ship we can refuse

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Saturday, Jan 07, 2006

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A ship we can refuse

It is heartening that the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee has responded firmly and with sensitivity to the despatch of the French Navy's decommissioned aircraft carrier, Georges Clemenceau, to India for dismantling. Was it right for France to despatch a vessel reportedly laden with toxic material when it is a signatory to the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes? And independent of what France has done, should India allow it in? The Committee rightly believes that the ship must not be allowed to enter India's waters. Thus far the debate has been preoccupied with the quantity of asbestos, banned in 36 countries worldwide including France, on the ship, and the question of whether "warships" are covered by the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention, signed by most countries but not by the United States, came about precisely because developing countries feared they would become the dumping yard of the North. As environmental regulations at home made the production, use, and disposal of hazardous materials increasingly difficult and expensive, many developed countries were, unsurprisingly, inclined to choose the cheaper option of sending the stuff to countries where wages were lower and laws relating to the environment and workers' safety lax. The French government has clearly defied the spirit of the Convention. But then the Basel Convention gives India the right to refuse entry to the French warship. Every year around 700 ships are dismantled, mostly in Asian ship-breaking yards. India hosts one of the largest of these in Alang, Gujarat, and there is copious documentation to show that workers dismantling ships in Alang labour under horrific conditions and are continuously exposed to poisonous and hazardous substances without the mandatory protective gear.

The ships being dismantled were built in the 1960s and 1970s when the use of asbestos was not banned. In Western countries, asbestos has long been acknowledged to be a deadly workplace killer. The considerable death toll in the United States and Western Europe from asbestos-related diseases led to a ban on further use of the material. The European Union banned asbestos as recently as January 2005. India has been quite permissive and, to make matters worse, there are no reliable data on the incidence of asbestos-related diseases. What the Government needs to do is simple. It must value the safety of workers and of the environment higher than the so-called economic benefits of allowing the ship-breaking industry to do someone else's dirty and dangerous work. Ship-breaking is profitable business and the Clemenceau will yield 26,000 tonnes of steel worth crores of rupees. But the profit will come at the cost of the health of hundreds of workers and the poisoning of land used to bury tonnes of toxic asbestos. The next stage will reveal to the world the value priorities of the Indian establishment.

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