Govt finalises guidelines for ship-breaking industry

CHITTAGONG, Jan 30: Chittagong Ship-breaking Yards Employees and Workers Federation president Md Shafar Ali said the government has finalised the regulations and guidelines for the country's ship-breaking industry.
"The laws for regulating the ship-breaking and recycling industry are being framed in line with the Basel Convention and Hong Kong Convention where the workers will have right to form trade unions in the industry," he said while speaking at a press conference held at a city hotel on Monday.
Other leaders of the organisation also spoke at the press conference.
Mr Ali said the workers have played an important role in preparing the regulations through meetings with the representatives of the government after getting the certificate for Chittagong Ship-Breaking Workers and Employees Federation (Chittagong-25) as the only government-affiliated organisation.
The government has formed the wage commission for the ship-breaking workers, he said, adding that as a workers' representative, he had a number of meetings with the lawmakers concerned to ensure rights and protect interests of the workers.
Other leaders said ship-breaking started from Chittagong about 50 years ago in view of the facilities along the Sitakunda sea coast. Local enthusiastic people first ventured to scrap a vessel left in the coast, they added.
Since then, the ship-breaking industry has flourished but it did not develop at expected level due to lack of guidelines from the government.
The government of Sheikh Hasina declared it as an industry a few years back. The workers have already turned the PHP Ship Recycling Yard into a green shipyard and vowed to work for improvement of other ship-breaking yards as well.
They said the PHP Ship Recycling Yard pays wages and benefits to the workers in due time apart from bonus, leave encashment and attendance bonus.
The workers said formation of the wage commission is a great achievement for the workers. It has been achieved after 10 years of struggle. The government is expected to implement minimum wages for ship-breaking yards at Tk 16,000 per month as demanded by the workers.
They said a meeting of the workers, chaired by deputy commissioner of Chittagong, decided that if any worker dies during his work in the ship-breaking yard, his family members will get Tk 0.6 million (Tk 6 lakh) as compensation.