FUSE shipbreaking

Shipbreaking

In 1960, after a severe cyclone, the Greek ship M D Alpine was stranded on the shores of Sitakunda, Chittagong. It could not be re-floated and so remained there for several years. In 1965, Chittagong Steel House bought the ship and had it scrapped. It took years to scrap the vessel, but the work gave birth to the industry in Bangladesh.
The industry grew steadily through the 1980s and by the middle of the 1990s, the country ranked number two in the world by tonnage scrapped. In 2008, there were 26 ship breaking yards in the area, and in 2009 there were 40.
At one stage the industry was a tourist attraction, but outsiders are no longer welcome due to its poor safety record; a local watchdog group claims that one worker dies a week and one is injured a day on average.
Workers have neither protective equipment nor financial security
In 2014, shipping company Hapag-Lloyd followed an earlier decision by Maersk to stop using the yard for breaking its old ships on account of the yard's poor safety standards, despite the higher costs elsewhere.