This film by the USA based National Labor Committee on
shipbreaking in Bangladesh.
Some of the world's largest decommissioned tanker ships -
measuring up to 1,000 feet long, twenty stories high and weighing
25 million pounds - have been run up on the beaches of Bangladesh.
In July 2009, 112 tanker ships were strewn over four miles of
beach.
Thirty thousand Bangladeshi workers, some of them children just
children just 10, 11, 12 and 13 years of ages, toil 12 hours a day,
seven days a week, for wages of just 22 to 32 cents an hour, doing
one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
According to estimates 1,000 and 2,000 workers have been killed
in Bangladesh's shipbreaking years over the last 30 years.
Currently, a worker is seriously injured every day, and a worker is
killed every three or four weeks.
Each ship contains an average of 15,000 pounds of asbestos and
ten to 100 tins of lead paint. Helpers often children, who go
barefoot or wear flip flops, use hammers to break apart the
asbestos in the ship, which they shovel into bags and carry
outside. Workers lack even the most rudimentary protective gear.
Cutters, who use blowtorches to cut the giant ships to pieces, wear
sunglasses rather then protective goggles., baseball caps rather
then hardhats, wrap dirty bandanas around their noses and mouth as
they are not provided respiratory masks.
To view the whole report 'Where ships and workers go to die'
please visit: http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=672