Govt flayed for ‘condemning families of Gadani ship-breakers to starvation’

NTUF criticises decision to shut down ship-breaking yard over oil tanker fire tragedy

In the aftermath of the Gadani oil tanker fire tragedy, it is the poor daily wagers who are suffering the most because the government, in an ill-advised move, has decided to shut the ship-breaking yard till such a time as new laws pertaining to safety and health are formulated.

This was stated by Nasser Mansoor, deputy general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), while addressing the media at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday afternoon.

He said shutting down the ship-breaking yard was tantamount to the economic murder of 12,000 workers directly associated with the industry. The families of those unfortunate workers, he said, had been condemned to starvation.

Mansoor stated that 29 deaths had been confirmed in the Gadani ship fire accident with 60 injured, seven being in a critical condition. This was apart from the undetermined number of labourers who had been missing since November 1 when the tragedy struck, he added.

There were over 150 workers in the blazing ship when the conflagration broke out, said the NTUF representative. The reason further details could not be determined was because an eyewitness, Farooq, had been arrested and whisked off to a secret location, he said.

Mansoor said that steel re-rolling mills which on the aggregate employed 250,000 workers would be rendered redundant because of the shutdown decision. 

The ship-breaking yard, he said, catered to 30 percent of the country’s iron and steel needs, and shutdown decision would come as a boon to the capitalist importers and would have a crippling effect on the economy.

He called for implementing labour laws in letter and spirit. He alleged that there were some very influential forces that were trying to project the tragedy as a terrorist activity, which was just a ploy to shift the world’s attention from the total lack of health and safety facilities and the governmental negligence as well as from the gross violation of the country’s laws and international conventions pertaining to labour which Pakistan had signed. 

The NTUF representative cited the case of the Ali Enterprises fire of 2012, which had killed 260 workers who were trapped in the burning garments factory, saying that it was projected as a conspiracy. The truth, he said, was the absence of safety facilities and the government departments’ apathy.

The next-of-kin of the missing persons were also present Wednesday’s press conference. An elderly woman, Saira Bano, whose son, Muhammad Shafi, was unaccounted for and the chances of finding whom were very slim, was really distraught.

Shafi’s six-year-old son was also there. The woman had a hard time narrating her ordeal as she would break down every now and then and could not complete her woeful account. 

Pointing to her grandson, she said, “He misses his father terribly and weeps bitterly but when I join in the weeping, he composes himself and consoles me, saying things like, ‘don’t worry grandma, father will be back soon’ even though he surely knows that this is a vain hope.”

Mansoor said that thus far, no murder case had been registered and instead the workers were receiving dire threats. “The fire raged for four days continuously, but there was no effort to combat it.” 

He said that since 1968, there had been 800 deaths, but the government seemed to be least pushed. Pakistan, he said, had signed so many ILO conventions but there was no implementation.

“The primary suspects behind the blast are the decommissioned ship’s owners, contractors and governmental watchdogs and institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency, the provincial labour department, the social security institution and the EOBI. They all should be held responsible as it was their bounden duty to maintain work standards.”  

Mansoor lamented that over a week had passed by since the horrific incident, but no government communiqué or functionary had bothered to condole with the next-of-kin of the workers which he said was the height of apathy.

He warned the federal and provincial governments to rescind the decision to close the Gadani ship-breaking yard down. He also demanded that those responsible for the incident be brought before a court of law; the family of each deceased worker be compensated to the tune of Rs3 million and the next-of-kin  of the injured be given Rs500,000 each as compensation; the government should take the genuine

representatives of the workers on board to formulate new iron-jacketed safety and health laws; workers be given the right to form unions and act as collective bargaining agents; contractual employment system be abolished right away; workers be registered with social security institutions and the EOBI for their welfare and their pensions; and the government should adopt a ship-breaking code like the one in India which had gone a long way in mitigating such incidents.

They also called for a ship-breaking labour board to formalise workers. He ended with a warning to the government to rescind the decision to shut the ship-breaking yard by November 14, failure to do which, he said, could result in a protest rally on the RCD Highway.