KARACHI: More than 120 people were aboard the vessel which exploded at the Gadani ship-breaking yard on Nov 1, a fact-finding commission led by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan revealed at a panel discussion on Thursday.

The Japanese-made oil tanker built in 1982, was docked at the Gadani ship-breaking yard’s plot 54 on Oct 22. The vessel went up in flames when an explosion occurred during gas welding inside the tanker.

According to workers and policemen, who the HRCP panel had interviewed, the contractor had marked the workers’ attendance before they had boarded the ship early in the morning but the attendance record was on the ship when it exploded.

The police count states the number of those deceased as 26, of which 25 have been identified. The National Trade Union Federation maintains that 27 workers had died and around 58 workers were injured. However, workers at the compound consider the official figures to be inaccurate claiming that it’s possible that up to 80 of their fellow workers might have perished in the fire.

According to the HRCP’s findings, the main contractor had been lured with more work if he managed to dismantle the ship in 45 days. As a result, the required procedure of draining the ship of fuel and other inflammable substances had not been carried out. When the workers cut open the fuel tank with a welding torch, the vessel caught fire and exploded.

The workers told the HRCP team that safety measures were rarely considered important. The focus remained primarily on dismantling ships as quickly as possible.

The HRCP’s fact-finding commission comprised Sindh HRCP vice chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt, Abdul Hayee, Chandan Kumar and Palwasha Shahab, while several other activists had helped the commission in gathering facts.

Mr Butt, who led the briefing and discussion, said the HRCP teams had visited Hub and Gadani twice where they had held meetings with representatives of the police, the labour union, the Gadani ship-breaking yard, and officials of the environment and health departments and the Balochistan Development Authority.

The commission had learned that the Edhi Foundation had sent ambulances to help the victims. Balochistan health officials had said that a government ambulance would have taken 24 hours to arrive at the scene. A lone fire truck had arrived from Karachi and the Pakistan Navy had deployed two helicopters to control the fire.

Panellists at the discussion included Karamat Ali, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, who lamented the fact that inspection teams were “not considered an integral part of workplace assessment”.

Advocate Faisal Siddiqi said that as in the case with the Baldia factory fire, they had observed that “local business elites are more powerful than the military and the state itself, making it difficult to go after them”. He said the courts were usually the last resort, but useful, as in the case of the Baldia tragedy, in which they had helped the families of the victims get compensation.

HRCP chairperson Zohra Yusuf said, “The media seems to have forgotten the incident because the victims are nameless, faceless.” She added that in the first few days after the incident, it was hard to figure out the ministry responsible for the Gadani ship-breaking yard.

The fact-finding report states that the Balochistan labour department was responsible for inspecting ship vessels at Gadani. It also states that there was “no clear law or rule which defines the tasks of the labour department regarding ship breaking”.

Although a case had been registered against the owner of plot 54 (where the incident had occurred), the manager and contractor involved in dismantling the ship were said to be at a “police safe house”.

Another ship catches fire

Fire broke out in an oil tanker anchored at the Gadani ship-breaking yard on Thursday. No casualty was reported.

As many as 100 workers were dismantling a Chaumadra LPG container at around 11am when the fire broke out. According to workers at the site, the ship had not been cleared of inflammable substances when the dismantling work began.

The workers were cutting LPG containers with gas welders when the walls of the container caught fire.

“Around 10 fire tankers managed to put out the fire after hectic efforts of two hours,” Muhammad Akram Nasar, chief officer of the Gadani Municipal Committee said.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2016