Latest news with #workerSafety
CTV News
3 days ago
- CTV News
Food processor guilty in Edmonton worker's death
Edmonton Watch Sofina Foods pleaded guilty in the death of an Edmonton worker who became trapped inside a smokehouse in March 2023.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
New rules may not change dirty and deadly ship recycling business
Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh -- where the majority of the world's maritime giants meet their end -- when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. "I can't get up in the morning," said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support. "We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation," said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm. The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards. Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February. Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say. The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world's most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented. Only seven out of Chittagong's 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. - No official death tolls - Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh -- close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce -- offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros). Chittagong's 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world's biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches. "When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous," said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand. "Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries." He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. "When there's an accident, you're either dead or disabled," the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers' support centre. There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said. But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos -- which is not illegal in Bangladesh -- is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region's soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. - 'Responsibility should be shared' - PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards. Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. "Just because we're South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?" he told AFP. "Ships are built in developed countries... then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. "But everything is our fault," he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore. "There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle," he added. His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes. But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic -- and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August -- investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. "I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity," said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation's Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate "regulation, supervision and worker protections" in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. - 'Toxic' Trojan horse - The NGO's director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries. In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into "50 different kinds of materials" to be recycled. Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal. A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters. But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have "25,000 pages of legislation to comply with", he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be "third-country compliant under SRR". Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. "You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching," where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. "And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe," he insisted. - Illegal dumps - Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. "If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down," Wyntin told AFP. In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said. Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said "hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil." "It's estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods," it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that "toxic materials from ships, including asbestos" are sometimes "resold on the second-hand market". In Chittagong everything gets recycled. On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away. Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation's yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast. Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are "condemned to live in poverty. It's our fate," said the young widow. agu/dp/fg/rl
News.com.au
5 days ago
- General
- News.com.au
New rules may not change dirty and deadly ship recycling business
Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh -- where the majority of the world's maritime giants meet their end -- when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. "I can't get up in the morning," said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support. "We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation," said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm. The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards. Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February. Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say. The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world's most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented. Only seven out of Chittagong's 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. - No official death tolls - Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh -- close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce -- offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros). Chittagong's 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world's biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches. "When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous," said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand. "Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries." He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. "When there's an accident, you're either dead or disabled," the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers' support centre. There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said. But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos -- which is not illegal in Bangladesh -- is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region's soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. - 'Responsibility should be shared' - PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards. Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. "Just because we're South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?" he told AFP. "Ships are built in developed countries... then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. "But everything is our fault," he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore. "There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle," he added. His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes. But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic -- and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August -- investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. "I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity," said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation's Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate "regulation, supervision and worker protections" in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. - 'Toxic' Trojan horse - The NGO's director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries. In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into "50 different kinds of materials" to be recycled. Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal. A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters. But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have "25,000 pages of legislation to comply with", he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be "third-country compliant under SRR". Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. "You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching," where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. "And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe," he insisted. - Illegal dumps - Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. "If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down," Wyntin told AFP. In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said. Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said "hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil." "It's estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods," it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that "toxic materials from ships, including asbestos" are sometimes "resold on the second-hand market". In Chittagong everything gets recycled. On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away. Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation's yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast. Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are "condemned to live in poverty. It's our fate," said the young widow. agu/dp/fg/rl
BBC News
6 days ago
- BBC News
Bin workers and recycling staff in South East abused and attacked
Staff at recycling centres and refuse collectors across the South East have been victims of physical and verbal attacks by the public, a BBC investigation has worker has described how a car was used "as a weapon" against colleagues and staff at some sites have been offered body-worn cameras for their have also been cases of workers being pushed and shoved and hundreds of cases of verbal abuse recorded by councils across the said they were taking measures to protect their staff and urged the public to show respect and patience. Simon Larbey, people development director at Veolia, which operates 10 waste recycling centres in East Sussex and two in Brighton and Hove, told the BBC a serious incident happened within a couple of weeks of him starting work in the county."We had two members of our team run over by a member of the public where the car was used as a weapon, sadly," he said."When the incident was reviewed, unfortunately the CCTV footage we had wasn't enough to get a conviction." Veolia says it has managed to reduce the number of abuse incidents after teaming up with Sussex Police last company introduced training on how to deal with abuse and staff can wear body-worn cameras for protection."We've seen incidents drop from one a week to one a month; sadly those incidents are still occurring," said Mr Larbey."We see a massive amount of queuing on sites, so unfortunately some of the frustrations the residents feel while queuing - we do see some of those frustrations escalate." Steven Rowe, Newhaven site manager, said: "Ninety per cent of the public are great, it's only a small percentage who swear at you, you might get the odd one or two with racial slurs."Just remember we're just normal people doing a job, it could be one of your family members, someone you care about and you should think about what you're doing." Jordan Leaney, the company's household recycling sites manager, said he had been confronted by two people after challenging them about prohibited waste."They followed me up to the office and walked in behind me and locked the door and I had to call my team to get me out," he said. Freedom of Information requests to local councils revealed there had been over 250 abuse incidents recorded by staff at waste recycling centres in East Sussex and Brighton since March 2020, but no physical recorded eight physical attacks at their sites, with 231 cases of verbal abuse between 2020 and County Council said six physical assaults had been recorded over the five years, and added that staff experienced verbal abuse on a daily basis across the majority of Sussex County Council could only provide figures for the last two years, but staff reported 27 cases of verbal abuse and three incidents where workers had been pushed or shoved by members of the public. Amanda Hart, a neighbourhood policing inspector at Sussex Police, said the body-worn technology was helping with evidence gathering."The body cam footage is a really good evidential product, for a jury to see the position that person was put in," she said. In recent years some authorities, such as Kent County Council, have introduced a booking system to use at the waste Wimble, cabinet member for the environment at Kent County Council, said: "Having spoken to the workers there, the system works really well."There's nothing worse than people turning up at these sites and having to queue which makes them frustrated." Refuse collectors also targeted BBC South East also contacted borough and district councils to find out the levels of abuse directed towards refuse collectors over the last five all were able to provide a breakdown of incidents. A handful of councils said they had recorded some physical assaults on Kent, 135 cases of verbal abuse were recorded, in Sussex 196 incidents were logged. Meanwhile, there are also ongoing concerns about the safety of refuse staff on the Anderson, director of communities at Horsham District Council, said: "Last year two of our crew were out when a car hit both of them. One of the guys has faced life-changing injuries. "One had emptied a bin, the other person was loading a bin into the lorry at the time and the driver just drove into them." He added: "Often it's about people who haven't got the patience to wait for a refuse lorry to complete its work in their road, and they'll mount a pavement to pass the refuse lorry."We have a number of CCTV cameras inside the cab and outside the vehicle and that allows us to monitor what's happened and we can report that immediately to the police."
Gulf Business
15-06-2025
- General
- Gulf Business
UAE: Midday work ban starts today, see penalties for violations
Image: Getty Images/ For illustrative purposes The UAE has commenced its 21st annual 'Midday Work Ban', effective from June 15 until September 15. A key part of the UAE's sustainable labour strategy, the rule, enforced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE), prohibits any outdoor work under direct sunlight between 12:30pm and 3pm daily. The initiative aims to safeguard the health and safety of workers — particularly in construction and outdoor sectors — during the country's peak summer heat, where temperatures often exceed 50°C. MoHRE added that its inspection teams will conduct unannounced field visits to monitor compliance at work sites and labour accommodations across the country. The ministry is also conducting awareness campaigns to inform both employers and employees of the regulations and the health risks of working in extreme heat. Read: Penalties for violators of midday work ban Violators of the Midday Work Ban face fines of Dhs5,000 per worker found working during the restricted hours, up to a maximum of Dhs50,000, and may risk suspension of the establishment's classification or operational permits. The Measures to be undertaken for workers Exceptions to the ban are made only for urgent tasks, such as infrastructure repairs, which must be reported in advance and compensated with alternative rest periods. The initiative supports the UAE's 'We the UAE 2031' vision, fostering a resilient and inclusive workforce. The country hosts over 200 nationalities, making the safety and dignity of all workers a national priority.
