CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, Sept. 2, 2007
The Ship Breakers Of Bangladesh
Ship Breaking Industry Arrived In Bangladesh By Accident, Literally
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Play CBS Video Video The Ship Breakers
In Full: Working for barely a dollar a day with little but their bare hands, the ship breakers of Bangladesh strip old ships in one of the world's most dangerous jobs. Bob Simon reports.
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Photo Essay
The Ship Breakers
See Cape Town-based photographer Mark Lewis' images of the ship breakers at Chittagong, Bangladesh.
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Fast Facts
Bangladesh
Learn about the people, economy and history.
Now and then 60 Minutes take viewers to places they’ve never been to before. They are exotic places, the stuff of dreams. This is a story about one of those places. But as Bob Simon reports, the ship breaking beaches of Bangladesh belong more in a nightmare.
We all know how ships are born, how majestic vessels are nudged into the ocean with a bottle of champagne. But few of us know how they die. And hundreds of ships meet their death every year. From five-star ocean liners, to grubby freighters, literally dumped with all their steel, their asbestos, their toxins on the beaches of some the poorest countries in the world, countries like Bangladesh.
You can’t really believe how bad it is here, until you see it. It could be as close as you’ll get to hell on earth, with the smoke, the fumes, and the heat. The men who labor here are the wretched of the earth, doing dirty, dangerous work, for little more than $1 a day.
It’s not much of a final resting place, this desolate beach near the city of Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal. Ships are lined up here as at any port, but they’ll never leave. Instead, they will be dissected, bolt by bolt, rivet by rivet, every piece of metal destined for the furnaces to be melted down and fashioned into steel rods. The ships don’t die easily - they are built to float, not to be ripped apart, spilling toxins, oil and sludge into the surrounding seas.
The men who work here are dwarfed by the ships they are destroying. And they dissect the ships by hand. The most sophisticated technology on the beach is a blowtorch. The men carry metal plates, each weighing more than a ton from the shoreline to waiting trucks, walking in step like pallbearers, or like members of a chain gang. They paint images of where they would like to be on the trucks - pictures of paradise far from this wasteland.
And when night falls, the work continues and the beach becomes an inferno of smoke and flames and filth.
This industry, which employs thousands and supplies Bangladesh with almost all its steel, began with an accident - a cyclone to be precise. In 1965, a violent storm left a giant cargo ship beached on what was then a pristine coastline. It didn’t take long before people began ripping the ship apart. They took everything and businessmen took note - perhaps they didn’t need a storm to bring ships onto this beach here.
Mohammed Mohsin’s family has become extremely wealthy bringing ships onto these beaches. He pays millions of dollars for each ship and makes his profit from the steel he sells. The name of his company is PHP, which stands for Peace, Happiness and Prosperity.
His latest acquisition is a ship weighing in at 4,000 tons but Mohsin tells Simon that's small by comparison to other vessels that have been gutted on the beaches. They have handled ships as large as 68,000 tons.
This the first time Mohsin has seen the 4,000 ton ship close up. In fact buying a ship is not at all like buying a car. He didn’t even need to see a picture before he bought it for $14 million. All he needed to know was its weight and how much the owners were charging for each ton of steel.
One of the single most valuable parts of the ship is the propeller. The "small" ships propeller is worth around $35,000 alone, Mohsin estimates.
It may be a small ship to Mohsin, but getting onto it from the beach is still a bit delicate.
Mohsin's ships don't have seafaring captains anymore - he is the captain now of dying ships and the captain of one of the largest of 30 shipyards on this 10-mile stretch of beach. Some 100 ships are ripped apart on the beach each year, most of them from the west.
"It is the west’s garbage dump," says Roland Buerk, who lives in Bangladesh. He spent a year in these yards, writing a book about the industry. 60 Minutes hired him to guide Simon through the tangled world of shipbreaking.
To do the same work in America or England would be very expensive.
"It would be because in Europe and America when they do this, they do it in dry docks," Buerk explains. "So in actual fact, the owners of these ships are selling them to the yard owners here to break up. If they had to do it in America, they’d have to pay for that process to be carried out. So you see it makes real economic sense to do it here."
"So old, out-dated ships that were previously a liability, are now an asset," Simon remarks.
"Exactly," Buerk agrees. "And that's why they end up on these shores."
Produced By Michael Gavshon
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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The ignorant see the Spotted Owl as simply %u201CAn Inconvenient Truth%u201D, but those who are not simply attaching labels, like %u201CEnvironmental Extremist%u201D but understand that an owl or a salmon is the lynch pin in the balance of nature, applaud the efforts of Al Gore and others to use science as a tool to better mankind. ===
Dominion over the animals does not mean Extinction of the animals. If God, whose name is perverted by the hypocrisy of Foley and Haggard, meant to extinguish all life save the Christian Right (which is neither) we would have remained in The Garden of Eden, alone with the snake we now call Rumsfeld.
It's worst than WalMarts treatment of their employees!
Having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer south of Chittagong, I have seen many of these atrocities first hand working at the grassroots level. I have seen young students who I would teach be forced to leave school because their families need them to work, or kids forced to leave their families at age 14 and be shipped to other South Pacific or Middle Eastern nations as indentured servants. Our own country has problems, but nothing compared to Bangladesh - we are fortunate to be born in America.
When you're dealing with the most corrupt country in the world for over five years, what do you expect? We have a demographic that has become apathetic due to extreme corruption at all levels, a place where religion reigns over everyday life versus proven medical and science practices, and where money means immediate survival over longterm education for children. Despite all of this, there is beauty to be found since personal and national pride can be found amongst the people, and this something the article should have also mentioned.
Having served as a Peace Corps Volunteer south of Chittagong, I have seen many of these atrocities first hand working at the grassroots level. I have seen young students who I would teach be forced to leave school because their families need them to work, or kids forced to leave their families at age 14 and be shipped to other South Pacific or Middle Eastern nations as indentured servants. Our own country has problems, but nothing compared to Bangladesh - we are fortunate to be born in America.
When you're dealing with the most corrupt country in the world for over five years, what do you expect? We have a demographic that has become apathetic due to extreme corruption at all levels, a place where religion reigns over everyday life versus proven medical and science practices, and where money means immediate survival over longterm education for children. Despite all of this, there is beauty to be found since personal and national pride can be found amongst the people, and this something the article should have also mentioned.
Many terms are mis-used these days, often because some words just feel good and everyone wants to use them. "Bling" is a recent example. An old example is "blow torch". It must give a reporter a warm feeling to work blow torch into a story. I hear it too often for a device that went extinct in the 1950s.
A blow torch is a liquid-fueled torch roughly the size and shape of a 1960s percolator.(My dictionary has a picture} They were hand-pumped to intensify the flame with a stream of air. They have not been used since the advent of the propane torch. The fact that one had to pour gasoline into it might have something to do with that.
The tool you referred to in "Ship Breakers" is an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, or just a cutting torch. Each time I hear a reporter mis-use a term, I wonder what else he is mis-informing me about.
Sincerely,
John Heiney
San Marcos CA
Many terms are mis-used these days, often because some words just feel good and everyone wants to use them. "Bling" is a recent example. An old example is "blow torch". It must give a reporter a warm feeling to work blow torch into a story. I hear it too often for a device that went extinct in the 1950s.
A blow torch is a liquid-fueled torch roughly the size and shape of a 1960s percolator.(My dictionary has a picture} They were hand-pumped to intensify the flame with a stream of air. They have not been used since the advent of the propane torch. The fact that one had to pour gasoline into it might have something to do with that.
The tool you referred to in "Ship Breakers" is an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, or just a cutting torch. Each time I hear a reporter mis-use a term, I wonder what else he is mis-informing me about.
Sincerely,
John Heiney
San Marcos CA
At the Gulshan Two traffic circle in Dhaka, you will find a number of shop keepers selling items left behind by crews who once manned the ships being disassembled in Chittagong. These relics include old coins, watches, wheels, anchors, compasses, wooden chests, and much more. Other items not found on the ships, such as pearls and shoes, have also found their way into the market due to frequent visits by wealthy Bangladeshis and foreign nationals (including the few tourists who travel to Bangladesh).
Bangladesh is also the most over-populated country in the world, adding to Simon's argument that work is hard to find. If one does not work on the ship breaking beaches of Chittagong, the common alternative is to become a rickshaw puller instead; a job just as laborsome and one that constantly threatens physical and verbal abuse by traffic cops and passengers.
Though not a completely accurate depiction of Bangladesh, 60 Minutes has, at least, offered a brief glimpse into a country that has continuously been ignored by the media. But next time they should do a story on a more pressing issue like the 18 people who died last weekend in violent political protests. Disagreement over who should overlook the upcoming election continues following the recent takeover by an interim government.
Mohammed Mohsin tried to justify his business by making the impression that he his helping his country by providing it with steel since, it is unable to produce steel due to the lack of iron. However, he and his company are making millions per ship. Bangladesh is not gaining any economic advantage.
The ignorant see the Spotted Owl as simply %u201CAn Inconvenient Truth%u201D, but those who are not simply attaching labels, like %u201CEnvironmental Extremist%u201D but understand that an owl or a salmon is the lynch pin in the balance of nature, applaud the efforts of Al Gore and others to use science as a tool to better mankind. ===
Dominion over the animals does not mean Extinction of the animals. If God, whose name is perverted by the hypocrisy of Foley and Haggard, meant to extinguish all life save the Christian Right (which is neither) we would have remained in The Garden of Eden, alone with the snake we now call Rumsfeld.
"cutting torch"/"blow torch"
I think everyone gets the idea of what 60 minutes was talking about...I still occasionally refer to my refrigerator as an ice-box -- no one yet has had to pull out a dictionary to figure out what I'm talking about.
And, as primitive as these operations are - maybe they are using blow-torches.
You didn't produce any evidence for that claim.
You complain that the West is exploiting them when the West has nothing to do with these operations. You claim that Bangledash gains no advantage--tell that to the workers who otherwise wouldn't have a job.
If this were the case in Bangladesh, no one would be working because no entity would stay in business. If you think ship breaking is a tragedy, you should learn how much teachers make there. In some cases, they don't get paid at all. Women working in the garment industry are also underpaid and work in terrible conditions.
But Bangladesh must find reasonable alternatives for employment before they shut these entities down for not meeting minimum wage requirements. You certainly can't shut down an education system all together. And the garment factories have empowered the thousands of women working there. I think by implying that these measures SHOULD be taken--by the way, there are a lot of things the Bangladeshi government SHOULD do--she really meant "should" but "can't," at least not at the current moment.
Craig
I have met many Bangladeshi people and I can tell you that these people work so hard and are so very generous! They are the poorest country in the world and I know that they will give me the shirt off there back when I go there. (Even if it is there only shirt, and they will happily give it to me.) It saddens me so much to know that there are millions of these wonderful people that are put in such danger just to survive.
Wouldn't it be great if we sent all that wasted money spent on campaign adds over to Bangladesh. Do you have any idea what they would do with that money. The joy that money would bring. What a waste!!!! It infuriates me to see how we waste money, food, everything in this country.
These are real people over there! Kind, giving people! Is there nothing we can do to help??
Try to think about what they go through. Educate other Americans. Do not judge immigrants who come here. They just want a better life! They want the American DREAM!
Thank you!
I wish I could travel there to experience their life first hand.
I'd love to talk to people further on this topic...message me on myspace, www.myspace.com/coreyjohn
ABeckmann, Raleigh,NC
ABeckmann
Yet again you provide only the side of the story that attacks the greatest philosophy the world will ever know - Capitalism! Shame on you CBS, to propagate the Marxist view point to your American Capitalist audience! We too had child labor. We too had poor working conditions. We too had a low starting point. But it was the Capitalists, the entrepreneurs that saw the potential for the creation of wealth and risked everything to make a better world for themselves and as a byproduct, raise the standard of living for all of us!
It was President Kennedy that said, "...a rising tide lifts all boats". He was right then and now.
Doug From Eagan
Ayn Rand Objectivist/Capitalist/American
Yet again you provide only the side of the story that attacks the greatest philosophy the world will ever know - Capitalism! Shame on you CBS, to propagate the Marxist view point to your American Capitalist audience! We too had child labor. We too had poor working conditions. We too had a low starting point. But it was the Capitalists, the entrepreneurs that saw the potential for the creation of wealth and risked everything to make a better world for themselves and as a byproduct, raise the standard of living for all of us!
It was President Kennedy that said, "...a rising tide lifts all boats". He was right then and now.
You could be stripping ships.
And as someone else stated - here we have the liberal media spouting their mis-information when they can''t or don''t care to get basic facts right e.g. A blowtorch vs a cutting torch.
Yes the situation is a sad one in some ways but it at least is providing work and material to countries that desparately need help. Yes there are things that could and should be done to protect the workers but that is the responsibility the leaders in those countries. We can encourage etc but come on folks, this is really just another media effort to demoralize us all. No matter how resposibly we, as a country or a people may act, the press will find something to dig at us to make us feel bad, otherwise they are out of a job.
Yes, caring for the welfare of others. How sad.
http://www.globalgayz.com/BDChittagongShipBreakingYard/index.html
But your slant is obviously in the direction of ''look at these poor downtrodden slaves''. These are not ''miserable'' people. Look closely at their faces and you don''t see the tension and anxiety of American corporate workers! They are workers who know nothing else and don''t particularly want anything else. They work 7AM to 11PM with a two hour mid-day break, get paid a low but reliable income; their kids go to school (I saw no child workers in the yard; upper teens yes, children no)--and many somewhat cheerful faces--not necessarily happy, but not miserable. They work with their friends; all feel equal. They have little and little to worry about.
The conditions are daunting but not wholly, the pace is calm and there are numerous periods of waiting during the day as the ship parts are taken apart.
It is not the horror show you portray. It''s dirty and rough but far from hell.
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April 27, 2009 6:11 AM PDT
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