I remember the good old days of Gen. Zia when Gidani beach was full of activity….more than 150 ships getting scrapped same time was an activity seen by myself, as i searched for industrial components, available so cheaply that one cannot imagine….the booming $1billion industry at that time, with thousands of people employed…was destroyed ..by no other than our ….Nawaz Sharif…because Ittefaq foundry needed more profits…now they are in line to get into higher roles again … what a disgusting thought!!!
GADANI: Pakistan’s forgotten ship-breaking industry is set for a boost as it prepares to tear up the oil tanker Kapetan Michalis, the largest ever ocean-going vessel to be scrapped.
The formerly Greek-owned Kapetan is poised to be broken here at Gadani, the heart of the nation’s once-thriving ship-breaking industry about 60 kms northwest of Karachi, on the edge of the Arabian Sea.
“It is so huge that it could take a year to be completely scrapped,” says Mohammad Akram, a labourer with 29 years in the industry under his belt.
A typical tanker can be stripped in around six months, but the Kapetan Michalis — the first of the gargantuan 70s-era tankers to be scrapped anywhere — is going to require a lot more work.
The tanker’s vital statistics — 427 metres long, 71 metres wide and 37 metres high — make her almost twice the size of the infamous Titanic, and the largest ship in the world “This is the largest ship that has ever been brought here for breaking and it will be an experience for me to supervise it,” says Mohammad Uzair, another veteran of the industry.
After nearly 25 years cruising international waters under its Greek owner, she pulled up her anchor for the last time in October after she was steered here by a Pakistani ship breaker.
The scrapping of Kapetan Michalis is giving a one-off boost to the ship breaking industry here, which has been floundering since its hay days of the late 80s and early 90s.
“I still remember the days when a long queue of ships was always waiting for scrapping and almost 100,000 labourers were at work,” Uzair sighs.
Now there are no more than a few thousand men working here, earning around Rs 6,000 per month, and only five to six ships are anchored at any one time.
Once stripped, Kapetan’s remnants of steel, motors and pipes will be sold to steel mills and other dealers. A supervisor at the yard estimates her parts will bring in over Rs 1 billion (17 million dollars).
In the 1970s the ship breaking industry was mainly concentrated in Europe, but high wages and the increasing cost of upholding environmental, health and safety standards led to Asia emerging as an alternative.
These days most of the world’s ships end their days on the beaches of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where environmental and other regulations are either non-existent or loosely enforced.
Still, Pakistan’s industry has struggled since the introduction early last decade of taxes — including higher duties on purchasing ships — which ship breakers say make it difficult to earn a profit.
Salahuddin Ahmed, secretary general of the Pakistan Ship-breakers Association, says duties have doubled from five to ten percent. Sales taxes meanwhile have jumped from 15 percent in 2000 to 20 percent and “rendered the business unviable”.
Around 5,500 tankers currently ply the world’s oceans. More than 40 percent were built before 1980, according to figures from environmental watchdog Green Peace.
Environmentalists are highly critical of the industry, branding it highly-polluting and accusing it of subjecting its underpaid workers to dangerous conditions
