Alang shipyard to commission solid waste disposal facility

Alang ship breaking yard, one of the world's biggest, near Bhavnagar in Gujarat is all set to commission its first solid waste disposal facility.

Gujarat Ship Recycling Association and Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) have hired the services of GEPIL which is currently running a similar project in South Gujarat.

Vipin Agarwal, general secretary, Gujarat Ship Recycling Association, said the facility is being created out of Rs 100 crore fund collected by GMB in 1994. The fund was raised mainly to support the additional facility for the Alang yard. GMB has invested nearly Rs 4 crore this year to create the facility for disposal of hazardous wastes.

Agarwal said the association is negotiating rates with the GEPIL- company which will handle the facility for the members and GMB.

The shipyard, which breaks about 350 ships per annum, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons - environmental pollution and declining occupational health of workers. The waste generated by this yard includes asbestos, glasswool, furnace oil, lead in batteries, thermocol sheets etc.

The yard is under the control of Gujarat Maritime Board which is the controlling authority for the ship breaking yards at Alang and Sosiya.

The yard is the source of livelihood for nearly 40,000 people. It has broken nearly 4,200 vessels till date and can produce three million metric tonne of scrap metal annually.

The ship breaking industry is considered to be accident-prone. Cases of workers getting injured by heavy machineries, health problems because of inhaling toxic fumes are not new.

However, GMB officials said the analysis of waste generated at the yard has been found to be less hazardous compared with other industries.

A report by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board in its house journal mentions that GMB has to take more concerted action for ensuring safety of workers at Alang.

It says due to various activities involved in ship breaking, some quantity of residual waste and solid waste can not be avoided. Out of this waste, 32 per cent is hazardous while 68 per cent is non-hazardous.