Owners of breaking yards were reported to have hired outsiders and workers from the country’s steel rolling mills to stage the protest in Chittagong city centre after a demonstration last month was unsuccessful, Bangladesh ennvironmental groups told Lloyd’s List.

The Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association and the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking have criticised the protest, arguing that in constrast to local media reports no workers from shipbreaking yards had actually been involved in the demonstration.

“Shipbreakers have money for the press so they can twist the news the way they want,” Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association chief executive Rizwana Hasan said today.

“After the last explosion that took place in a Chittagong breaking yard and took away the lives of workers instantly, did you seen any protests from the other workers? Isn’t it amazing that the workers don’t protest when co-workers die but they protest when a law has been activated in English, which they don’t even understand.”

The NGO’s Bangladeshi representative Muhammed Ali Shahin agreed, saying that most of the people protesting were “not original workers from shipreaking at all but just some hired people”.

Even if yard workers were involved, protestors were carrying banners and posters they would not have been able to afford to have printed on their minimal wages and also would be unable to understand as the majority of them were illiterate, he said.

Owners of shipbreaking yards, and also re-rolling mills that use steel recycled from ship demolition, were understood to be protesting against actions by the Ministry of Commerce brought in on January 26, stating that all ships entering Bangladesh for breaking purposes required a certificate that all hazardous materials had been cleaned out by the exporting owner.

Ms Hasan said that a protest had been organised a few days after this but it was badly organised and “flopped”.

Yesterday’s protest followed moves last week by the Minsitry of Commerce that informed Bangladesh’s customs department not to let ships without pre-cleaning certification into the country’s waters for breaking.

“This is what made the owners arrange this so-called protest,” Mr Shahin. “However, pre-cleaning is one of the solutions to ensure the protection of environment from the pollution generated from shipbreaking and above all, the transboundary movement of hazardous waste.

“The shipbreaking yards owners never showed any interest to ensure a environment friendly shipbreaking and they always concentrated on their highest profits. The protest shows their negative attitude towards the environmental principle.”

Although the implications of the new import policy on the volume of ship recycling carried out in Bangladesh were not yet clear, with the country topping the list of demolition nations and recycling 10.3m dwt in 2009, it could greatly affect the ship scrapping industry.

“I don’t think the government is going to change the import policy,” Ms Hasan said. “The government may say that ships that were already in Bangladesh prior to the import policy may be allowed to be broken but they may also say ‘Enough is enough’ and force re-rolling mills to import steel billets to fill the vacuum that not having ship breaking would cause for the steel rolling mills.”