BSBA bid to remove BD\\\'s negative image over ship breaking industry

CHITTAGONG, July 11: Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association (BSBA) has inked a contract with a team of expert physicians to run a hospital for workers of the ship breaking and ship recycling industry in Chittagong.
The contract was signed at the BSBA Hospital at Bhatiary of Sitakunda on July 10 evening. President of the BSBA MA Taher and Dr BK Das signed the contract on behalf of the respective parties.
It was attended, among others, by BSBA vice president Md Shafi, executive body members NUM Jahangir Chowdhury, Nayeen Shah Imran, Zahirul Islam Rinku, Md Lokman, Sekander Hossain, Md Salah Uddin, Ashiqur Rahman Laskar, Bhatiary Union Parishad chairman Anwar Hossain, Dr Debashis Roy and Dr Nasim Uddin.
A statement of the BSBA said that it has constructed a six-floor hospital with modern operation theatre, medical equipment, outdoor facilities and other amenities befitting to a modern hospital at the cost of Tk 300 million from the BSBA fund.
The BSBA leaders said that some quarters were engaged in building a negative impression of Bangladesh's ship breaking and ship recycling industry. The BSBA is committed to removing that negative image of the industry for which it has been inviting the foreigners, especially the representatives of the western world, to visit the shipyards.
The Bangladesh ship breaking and recycling industry has made its footprints in the beginning of the 1980s and now the Government of Netherlands has come forward to lessen environmental pollution and improve the waste management in the Sitakunda beach shipyards.
The BSBA has also entered into an agreement with the India-based Creative Consultants to provide different training programmes to workers of the shipyards.
The ship breaking yard owners expressed hope that the BSBA Hospital would start giving medical treatment from October 2015. The patients would get medical treatment and other facilities at reduced prices.
The hospital will provide treatment to accident patients, children department, diabetes, heart decease, kidney patients, gastric deceases, surgery, plastic surgery, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, nose, ear and throat, gynecology etc.
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