GADANI: Shipbreakers to earn Rs1bn from Greek vessel scrap
GADANI, Nov 10: Pakistan’s forgotten shipbreaking 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 at Gadani, the heart of Pakistan’s once-thriving ship-breaking industry about 60 kilometres (37 miles) northwest of Karachi.
“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 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 (1,400 feet) long, 71 metres (233 feet) wide and 37 metres (120 feet) high — make it almost twice the size of the infamous Titanic, and the largest ship in the world so far to be scrapped.
“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, the ship pulled up its anchor for the last time in October after it was steered here by a Pakistani shipbreaker.
The scrapping of Kapetan Michalis is giving a one-off boost to the shipbreaking industry here, which has been floundering since its halcyon days of the late 80s and early 90s.
“I still remember the days when a long queue of ships was always there, 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 Rs6,000 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 its parts will bring in over Rs1 billion.
In the 1970s, the shipbreaking 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 shipbreakers say make it difficult to realise a profit.
Salahuddin Ahmed, secretary-general of the Pakistan Shipbreakers’ Association, says duties have doubled from five to ten per cent. Sales taxes, meanwhile, have jumped from 15 per cent in 2000 to 20 per cent and “rendered the business unviable”.
Around 5,500 tankers currently ply the world’s oceans. More than 40 per cent were built before 1980, according to figures from environmental watchdog — Greenpeace.
Environmentalists are highly critical of the industry, branding it highly-polluting and accusing it of subjecting its underpaid workers to dangerous conditions.—AFP
