"As tattered laborers wait beachside in a secluded Mumbai port, an aging ship making its twilight voyage runs aground, settling its hull into the sand before flopping, listlessly, on its thick steel side. The shipbreakers rush to the death scene of the expired vessel and, without hesitation, begin the long, laborious process of dismantling the scrapped ship by hand. Wading through toxins, pulling apart asbestos-laden pieces and inhaling oil, gas and other hazardous fumes earns them a meager wage for the day. The rest of the world has denied a final resting place to these floating tons of toxicity–nearly all of which are the West’s waste–but the work persists in South Asian port cities, where cheap labor and lax safety standards fail to protect workers. Over 80% of the shipbreaking industry worldwide is in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

And business is only about to get better."

Lisez la suite de l’article "Shipbreakers : One of the Informal Sector’s Most Hazardous Jobs".