Travel report India

Part 1: Alang, the world's largest scrapping site

It's still ten kilometres to the beaches of Alang when we are obviously getting near de scrap yards. Lifeboats lie in the pastures. Heavy machinery is displayed in sheds. On both sides of the road in the village of Alang one can buy all kinds of ship's parts. Enormous lathes, hawsers, beds, isolation material, life-jackets and clocks. Everything you can find on a ship has been scrapped and sold here.

When we arrive at the small office of the Gujarat Maritime Board we are not allowed to go to the shipbreaking yards immediately. It looks as if they feel quite uncomfortable about our visit. One of the men takes us to a building that is still under construction but will be an educational and training centre for the workers. The port authorities and some of the scrap yards realise the work has to be done saver. Pressure from the outside world certainly helped to convince them. But it might take years before the first worker gets his training here, considered the state of the building.

Along the beach there is a road of some ten kilometres long. Shipbreaking yards are on the seaside and small houses, teahouses and little shops on the other side. Here the workers live, less then a hundred metres from their work. Nobody has to register to work at the yards. So nobody knows how many people live in Alang: it could be ten or forty thousands.

It strikes us that many workers are from the same village or from the same family. They were recruited in all parts of India to work at the scrap yards. That's why in some families the loss of sons, brothers and husbands is extremely high. The work is very hard and dangerous and accidents happen every day.

When we drive up the beach we can see the first shipwrecks lying there. At this beach only there are at least 120 scrap yards! The beach is divided into pieces of approximately 50 metres per yard. Here the port authorities did improve some working conditions. At a few yards workers now wear helmets and boots. In fact this is standard working material all over the world in dangerous and risky work like this. But the scrap yards in Alang present it as a tremendous improvement. Still it's hard and dangerous labour in the burning sun. Ramshackle shears sway enormous steel plates above the heads of the workers. On the ground lots of steel pieces and cables lie around, left there by the torch cutters. It seems irresponsible and even impossible to work here barefooted or wearing flip-flops. But that is what happens in a lot of scrap yards.

According to the representative of the port authorities the yards now have to meet stringent requirements. He tells us there will be facilities to remove toxic substances safely. We will only believe that when we see it. Remarkably some of the measures are financed with Dutch development cooperation money.

We step through two steel doors onto a scrap yard: yard number 74/75. At this spot lies one of the 50 ships for scrap that Greenpeace put a spotlight on: the 'Leader'. About one quarter of the ship has already been dismantled. Standing at the wharf we look straight into the immense holds of the ship. The owner of the scrap yard unwillingly allows us onto his yard. He doesn't give us much information about the ship. And he refuses to say anything about his contacts with the owner. Pretty soon we leave for yard number 108. Here a ship immediately attracts our attention. It's the Dutch 'Holstein Express', owned by Vroon Shipping in Breskens, the Netherlands. Earlier Greenpeace has asked this ship owner if his ships were sent for scrap to India. Without proper inventory of hazardous materials and with all toxic substances still on board. The company flatly denied. Now the prove lies here, right under our noses: a huge ship that transported cattle for years. For us it's reason enough to closely monitor this Dutch ship owner.

Part 2: Toxic fumes and black sand