Scrapping yards near Alang
Coordinates: 21 ° 24 ′ 14 ″ N , 72 ° 11 ′ 16 ″ E
The scrapping yards near Alang are located on the beach in the city of Alang in the Indian state of Gujarat on the Gulf of Khambhat . The companies dismantle seagoing vessels.
meaning
The scrapping of old ships began in Alang on February 13, 1983 with the stranding of the general cargo carrier Kota Tanjong, built in 1956 by the German shipyard, at the Alang-Sosiya Shipbreaking shipyard. According to information from environmental organizations, around 700 larger ships are decommissioned worldwide every year. The shipyards in Alang are now dismantling around 40% of these decommissioned ships.
In 1997, 35,000 workers dismantled 348 ships, it took them about two months to wreck. The approximately 10 km long section on the beach was leased to 184 companies.
According to official figures, 4,539 ships were scrapped between the beginning of 1983 and the beginning of 2008.
Unsafe working conditions
Large ships such as super tankers , bulk carriers , ferries and container ships are beached at high tide with their own machine power. When the tide sets in , numerous workers and craftsmen begin to dismantle the ships.
The demolition site in Alang has sparked controversy about the working and living conditions of the employees and also about environmental damage. One of the big problems is that despite many serious accidents at work, the nearest fully equipped hospital is in Bhavnagar, 50 kilometers away . In Alang itself there is only a small Red Cross hospital that can only treat accident victims to a very limited extent.
According to a 1998 report, one death a day is not uncommon. It was also reported at the time that the bodies were being burned on the beach.
environmental issues
When the scrapping of old ships began, Alang still had a largely untouched and clean sea coast. Today the beach and the adjacent hinterland are seriously contaminated with asbestos , heavy metals , oils and other substances.
In January 2006 the Supreme Court of India banned the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau from entering Indian territorial waters, where it should have been scrapped. The carrier was eventually canceled in the UK.
In 2009 the case of the Platinum II , formerly Independence , aroused international displeasure due to the PCB materials used.
The decline
According to the Ship Recycling Industries Association India (SRIA) via Reuters agency, around 50 of 100 scrapping sites in Alang were closed in 2014. In 2014 only 274 ships were scrapped, as few as in six years. The reason is that steel in China is cheaper than ever before, cheaper than the previously achieved price for recycled steel obtained from scrapped ships.
Examples of scrapped ships
Known ships that were scrapped in Alang - the year of their scrapping in brackets:
- the training ship Germany (1994)
- the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (1994/95)
- the ferry of the Vogelfluglinie , Theodor Heuss (1997)
- the ferry of the Vogelfluglinie , Germany (1999)
- the ferry of the TT line , Nils Holgersson (2003)
- the tanker Khan Asparuh (2003)
- the ferry Scandinavian Star (2004)
- the aircraft carrier Minas Gerais (2004)
- several former DSB ferries , such as the Sprogö (2004), Arveprins Knud (2004), Dronning Margrethe II (2005) Romsö (2006) and the Prins Henrik (2007)
- the Tallink ferry (2005)
- the cruise ship Norway (2007)
- the Finnjet ferry (2008)
- the cruise ship Maxim Gorkiy (2009)
- the passenger ship Regal Empress (2009)
- the former largest ship in the world, the years Viking / Knock Nevis (2010)
- the Pride of Telemark ferry (2011)
- the former oil tanker Exxon Valdez (2012)
- the cruise ship The Calypso (2013)
- the submarine recovery ship and deep-sea drilling ship Hughes Glomar Explorer (2015)
literature
- Judit Kanthak, Andreas Bernstorff, with inputs from Nitiyanand Jayaraman: Ships for Scrap - Steel and Toxic Wastes for Asia - The health and environmental hazards in recipient states - A fact finding mission to the Indian shipbreaking yards in Alang and Bombay. Greenpeace, Hamburg, March 1999
- Helge Janßen describes in his novel “Grundberführung”, published by Mohland-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86675-151-4 , the towing of a super tanker to Alang in India and the process of “being stranded”. He also goes into the dire working conditions of the scrap burners.
Web links
- Information on Alang from the Gujarat Maritime Board
- Travel report 1998 about Alang (English, with photos)
- Greenpeace: Dangers of ship dismantling
- IMF: Chittagong, Alang, Mumbai ( Memento from September 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English, YouTube video)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tony George Puthucherril: From Shipbreaking to Sustainable Ship Recycling: Evolution of a Legal Regime , Brill, Leiden, 2010, p. 31.
- ↑ a b Alexandra Rigos: One dead person a day. In: Der Spiegel , November 8, 1998 ( online )
- ↑ Hilmar König: "Giftpott" anchored off Alang. Largest ship cemetery in the world in India is back in the headlines. In: Neues Deutschland , October 20, 2009 ( online )
- ↑ The end of the ship cemeteries: High price for people and the environment, ORF.at 6 August 2015.