The Burns Centre at Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) is no place for weak hearts.

On the morning of Tuesday, November 1, some 10 men lay in the various ward rooms of the hospital, asphyxiated, fighting for every breath that they could take, struggling to hang on to their lives. They had all been rushed some 57km from Gadani, the world’s third largest shipbreaking yard at Gadani.

All had been hired just two days earlier, on arrival of the 24,000-ton oil tanker MT Aces. All had received 60 to 100 per cent burns; none were expected to live. Most of them had been kept on life-support. Some were heavily sedated.

Only one, Sanaullah, from Gadani Morr, was able to speak a little. “There was still about six feet of oil remaining in the tanks and our supervisors wanted us to hurry up with the work,” he said, explaining that work on dismantling the ship with powerful welding torches was also under way simultaneously. Sanaullah was helping in draining oil from one of the oil tanks near the ship’s hull with a bucket.

Around 300 labourers were hired to dismantle the ship. All of them were daily-wagers, as is the norm at Gadani. Labourers accuse the owners of wanting the ship to be scrapped as soon as possible so that they could get their returns as soon as possible. Therefore, they claim, they were being made to do everything simultaneously instead of doing things in stages.

The metal body of a ship grows very hot in the sun and with oil in it, fumes also accumulate inside. Normally, wherever safety measures are observed in the world, welding is not permitted until the ship has been entirely drained of oil and all other inflammable substances. This did not happen that fateful day in shipbreaking yard number 54.

The recent tragedy at the shipbreaking yard which took the lives of at least 26 workers was a window to its everyday reality as an outpost of oppressive labour practices

With all precautions set aside, it was a calamity just waiting to happen.

With hundreds of workers on board, sparks from a welding torch turned the entire ship into a powerful bomb. The massive explosion flung many of the workers several hundred feet out into the sea and on land, along with pieces of the ship. Many died instantly, others were critically injured and passed away in hospital. But these were the ones who were at least identified.

The ones trapped inside the ship never made it out as it burned for over two days until the oil inside lasted. There was no chance rescuing them alive or recovering their bodies during that time. Rescue and fire teams, including ambulances from Karachi, could only watch aghast as the ship burned for two whole days. When the fire was finally doused, the official death toll was 26 although many workers are still missing and presumed dead by their family and colleagues. Fifty others are wounded.

Caught unawares

Three days after I met him, word came through that Sanaullah had succumbed to his injuries, as had his two colleagues, Alam Khan and Ghulam Haider. Like Sanaullah, they too had been draining oil from the ship’s tanks at the time. Sanaullah’s mother, who only understands Balochi and spoke to me through an interpreter, says that accidents are no one’s fault.

“How can I blame anyone for my son’s death?” she says through her interpreter. “It was after all an accident.”

Nur Bakhsh, too, died the same way. He was an only child. His father Imam Bakhsh, an invalid with failed kidneys, can only seek solace from fate. “It was God’s will that my son was to be taken from me this way,” he sighs.

Reliance on ‘God’s will’ is indeed one way that families of labourers console themselves. But it is also used by shipyard owners as a convenient get-out. Not many are willing to assume responsibility for the labour rights violations happening on an everyday basis; nobody is willing to introduce new practices either.

“There is hardly any concept of occupational health and safety at the shipbreaking yards of Gadani,” says Bashir Ahmed Mahmoodani, president of the Shipbreaking Workers Union at Gadani. “And these labourers don’t really understand this. Therefore, their poor families, too, have quietly accepted their untimely deaths. But they should know that they have been majorly wronged.”

According to a report published by the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in 2013, 68 shipbreaking yards are active today, while there are 38 contractors who bring in about 12,000 to 15,000 active workers. Most workers hail from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southern Punjab, not coincidentally among the most poverty-stricken parts of Pakistan.

“We lose workers at Gadani on and off but nobody even knows about these isolated cases,” explains Mahmoodani. “There are men without safety harnesses falling off rickety ladders, there are iron girders and sheets falling on them, there are numerous burning incidences, electrocution cases, which are not reported and thus swept under the rug.”

Lesser humans

The living conditions for the workers are an indication of how seriously their well-being is considered by the owners. Scrapwood from the ships is turned into makeshift roadside huts and food stalls by the men who work there. “Many of us have no place to stay so we beg the contractors for the wood from the ships being dismantled here,” says Naseem Khan from Dera Ghazi Khan. “We live in small boxes that resemble dog kennels. Some of us don’t even have that and we sleep in the small verandas of the foodstalls.”

There is no potable water either. Workers dig wells for drinking water but only get brackish water that way. “The water makes us sick, some get bad throats, some diarrhoea,” says Mohibullah from Bannu. “Not everyone here dies in accidents. Some of us also get sick. I have personally lost a cousin to dehydration after he had diarrhoea for days. But this is the only water available for drinking. It tastes horrible and we can’t get used to it even after spending months in Gadani.”

Mohammad Usman from Swat says that he worked at Gadani for six months and then went back home again after getting sick and tired of the working conditions here. “But I came back, too, because I am an illiterate fellow for whom jobs don’t come by easily,” he says. “There are not even bathroom facilities here. I bathe in the sea and most of the time the sea water is also polluted with oil from the ships.”

Given such miserable living conditions, it is no surprise that shipyard owners and contractors don’t care much about safety processes.

A walk around the shipbreaking yards brings into view stacks of metal from the ships. A half-buried broken pair of goggles reflects the harsh rays from the sun. “Goggles and gloves are the only protective gear we get from our contactors,” says Mohammad Akmal from Rahim Yar Khan. “It didn’t take long for me to realise that these were not enough. My regular clothes became so dirty that I couldn’t even wash them. My slippers also broke. That was when I demanded overalls and boots, only to be told to work or get lost. Finally, I spent from my own pocket to acquire a helmets, boots and overalls for myself from the thrift markets in Karachi. Many others also followed suit.”

Workers in Gadani earn between 500 to 800 rupees a day. Employment is all out-sourced to contractors so that legally the owners of the yards do not have to pay any benefits to the workers. But most of them are just happy to find work, at whatever cost. And this is what their employers exploit.

A history of neglect

Where there is abject carelessness about safety measures and safety gear for the workers, there has also been some history of labour struggles against oppressive labour practices. Back in 2010, labour leaders explain, over 10,000 workers from various shipbreaking yards had joined ranks to go on strike and protest the deplorable state of affairs in Gadani.

The strike had started off in June as a response to some workers sustaining severe injuries while at work who were neither provided any first-aid nor rushed to any hospital. By the time they were driven to a government hospital in Karachi, doctors had to amputate one man’s leg to save his life. In July that year, three men sustained severe burn wounds as their contractors forced them to carry on working despite the strike. Another worker, Bak Rawan, fell 55 feet from the top of a ship and was critically injured. He later succumbed to his injuries as he was alone then. Even his body could not be discovered for several days.

Labour leaders as well as common workers allege that there is collusion between yard owners, contractors and the police, which ensures that worker struggles for rights are met with heavy force. No FIRs are registered, dead bodies are shifted from the yards before others can mourn the loss of their deceased colleague, and union activity is severely discouraged.

Even back in 2010, workers were demanding an end to the exploitative daily-wage system and asking for permanent contracts or at least to make them or their families eligible to gratuity and pension. They had also demanded that there should at least be ambulances and fire tenders on standby at all yards at all times.

But nothing changed.

After the recent tragedy, Mohammad Afzal from Multan points out that there was only one ambulance at Gadani at the time. “This ambulance remains out of order for most of the time,” he says. “If it is serviced and in working order at any time, it is only reserved for the use of the children of the contractors and the few police personnel here as it is used to transport them to school and back,” he adds.

There is a small hospital at Gadani with no medicines and no doctors. According to Nasir A. Masroor, deputy general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), any doctor who is stationed there soon leaves complaining of not being provided with any facilities or medicine.

“Meanwhile, the workers have been provided with no place to live, they don’t have access to clean water and they have to pay for their own meals as well,” says Masroor. “In case any of them raises his voice about being denied his basic rights, he is promptly fired and replaced by another new and unsuspecting worker until he too becomes more cognisant of his rights.”

Union-busting

The Shipbreaking Workers Union is the third union formed by Mahmoodani at Gadani. In 2009, he had formed the Shipbreaking Democratic Workers Union for benefit of the workers, which got deregistered soon after. “I believe the shipbreaking owners had something to do with it,” he claims.

Then in 2012, he again formed a union, this time the Shipbreaking Mazdoor Union, which was also deregistered. “At the time the shipbreaking yard owners had their union but their contractors and their people ran that one,” says Mahmoodani. “They only recognised their union, which only looked after their personal interests and agendas. After our union workers came together to demand a referendum in their union for us to consider it legitimate they came after our union to have it wrapped up.

“Suddenly, there were several false cases registered against me and the union,” he says. “This union was also wrapped up shortly thereafter.” He adds that he now tries helping workers from the forum of the Shipbreaking Workers Union.

“A while back we started a campaign for spreading awareness among the workers and to educate them regarding occupational safety. But the problem is that the workers keep changing, with many returning home and new ones coming here. There is a constant inflow of workers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Punjab, who are unaware of their basic rights. This [labour rights education] has to be an ongoing process.

Profits above all

While workers struggle to achieve even the basic minimum standard for employment conditions, the owners of the Gadani shipbreaking yards rake in massive profits. The owners remain tight-lipped about their earnings. Still, they say they are helping the country more in earning revenue as steel foundries have to import ore for steel that takes up a major chunk of the country’s foreign exchange. The steel from a ship is solid. Since it is treated steal, it does not readily rust. Re-rolling and melting factories in Quetta, the Hub area and Karachi buy this steel.

Pakistan tax officials estimate shipbreaking revenue per vessel at around 4.5 million US dollars. But the owners argue that their profits may fluctuate according to steel prices in the country. Steel isn’t the only thing that sells from a ship coming to Gadani for breaking, however. The oil in its tanks is also collected in barrels and sold out. The wood, which is also treated and won’t fall prey to white ants and termites, is also sold to buyers as are the various gadgets on the ship.

The 10 kilometres long beach at Gadani where shipbreaking takes place is said to be ideal for the job because the water level there near the beach is deep making the beaching of ships easier. Shipbreaking in Gadani began in 1973 and today, Pakistan is only behind China and Turkey in shipbreaking in terms of business, ahead of India and Bangladesh. And yet there are no electricity or communication lines laid out there. Rescue teams that reached in Gadani after the accident had a huge challenge on their hands when they realised there was no electric power to light up the area for their recovery operation after sunset.

After the tragedy

In the wake of the Gadani tragedy, several rallies have been staged by workers’ unions and NGOs. The government too has finally turned its attention to safety violations at Gadani — even if this gaze may be temporary.

The government has announced that the families of the workers who lost their lives in the tragedy and those who were injured would be compensated. There is talk that those who lost their lives would be given one million rupees each. But it is still unclear as to how many workers actually died in the tragedy because some of their charred bodies could not be traced inside the ship once the fire was doused. Without positive identification, their families may not be compensated.

At a press conference called at the Karachi Press Club by NTUF in collaboration with the Shipbreaking Workers Union, for example, a mother of one such worker from Karachi spoke about how she was still looking for her missing son. Saira Bano says that she had searched all the hospitals for her son Mohammad Shafiq but to no avail. Other workers have told her that he was inside the ship during its dismantling but they never even found his body. There are many more like him, still unaccounted for.

The yard where the accident took place has been sealed for inquiry. The office-bearers of the official union, who may know exactly how many workers they hired for the work are either missing or under custody. The contractor, who had the records of the hired daily-wagers, was himself injured in the accident, and has been unavailable. There is a Section 144 imposed at Gadani with work on standstill there. Still, the Shipbreaking Workers Union has been successful in getting a meagre 500 rupees daily payment for the out-of-work men.

“The owners of the yards never even showed their faces when their workers needed them the most,” says local councillor Wazira Bibi. “Some families of the dead didn’t even have money to bury their loved ones and other workers had to contribute money to help them. Some dead bodies also had to be sent back upcountry from where the men hailed.”

The overall safety regulation in place at Gadani had raised fears in 2013 that the European Union would stop sending business to Pakistan since labour and environmental practices in Gadani did not meet their ship-recycling regulations. These fears have reared their head again as the European Union is expected to release a revised list of norms and practices, failure to adhere to which will result in Gadani losing its share in business. Part of the European Union’s demands have to do with more green practices in ship recycling but in Pakistan, public investment or government oversight in shipbreaking matters is minimal.

In comparison, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court decreed in August 2010 that any decommissioned ship entering the country’s waters for dismantling would need to be cleansed of any toxins and to be pre-cleaned before it anchored at one of the 100 breaking yards in Chittagong.

Till this day, the shipbreaking industry in Gadani operates on a minimal cost, maximised profits mantra. Some mechanisation processes in various shipyards have allowed Gadani to retain business although how much longer it can continue to operate this way is moot.

The writer is a member of staff and tweets @HasanShazia

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 20th, 2016