Ship Breakers of Bangladesh Organizer Brooklin deBoer

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Does This Film Do What It Was Set Out To Do? I believe this film is more so informative than anything. I'm sure that everyone in the world would really like to help prevent all of the harmful toxins that potentially could be entering into the waterways, but considering the fact that this is all happening in a very poor country, they can not afford to take the extra safety precautions. Being as poor of a country that it is, they can not even provide and safety equipment for the workers that are dismantling the ships and they are barely even making $1 a day. Because of this, I would say that this is just "infotainment". As much as we would all love to do something about what is going on over seas, there isn't really much that can be fixed by this.

By: Brooklin deBoer

Ship Breakers of Bangladesh

Why Care?

Social/Cultural Perspectives The workers who are dismantling the ships work as a team to get a large amount of work done in as little time as possible. They work very efficiently and as a team to take down large ships. There is one man who is in charge of buying the ships, and he has become very wealthy since doing so. He buys many large ships that are no longer in use and he gets them beached onto the shore, where the men then go ahead and start working away at dismantling them. There are no unions or anything, and the only person that it said was in charge was the Peace, Hope, and Prosperity man.

Political Perspectives The workers who are dismantling the ships do not really have a say in how things are done. I think they would all prefer it if they had some safety equipment to help prevent them being hurt. They also should be getting paid more than $1 a day but the government is barely paying them at all, as long as the work gets done, they could care less.

Environmental Perspectives As the workers proceed to dismantle all of these ships, there is a lot of toxins getting into the water which potentially can kill many people, animals, and plants. They are not doing anything to try and prevent the spillage of these contaminants because they can not afford to. There is also probably a lot of air pollution that is happening from when they are melting all of the metal into rods. Although they are recycling the metal, they are not necessarily doing it in an environmentally friendly way. There are activists who are trying to stand up against this industry because of how negative the impact is on the environment, but the government is basically just kicking them to the curb saying "caring about the environment is a first world problem and we do not need to worry about that over here".

Economic Perspectives The workers here are not treated well and they are barely paid anything. Most are being paid $1 a day which is not enough to get by. Most families have to send out their children to work as well because they can not afford to have only one or two incomes. Some of the boys that are working there started out working there as young as 12 years old. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, so their dollar is low, and it is very difficult to find work and to make enough money to get by.

Why There?

They send the old ships to countries such as Bangladesh because by doing so, they aren't having to pay people from their own countries to break them down. They are also helping the people of Bangladesh out by providing jobs for about 30000 men and also providing many objects to sell in markets (eg. toilets, sinks, books, etc), and providing metal for buildings there.

What's Where?

This is an issue all around. It mainly starts as being an issue in just Bangladesh but it then becomes much larger than that. There is a lot of toxic substances that are left behind from the ships will end up leaching into the waterways for the country ruining their drinking source. They can also get into the oceans/lakes that they are arriving by causing a depletion of clean, safe water causing harm to fish, birds, and other animals and plants that use that water to survive.

Countries such as Britain and other privileged countries are throwing away their old ships onto the shores of poor countries such as Bangladesh.

Subtopic

The countries that are in the west are dumping their old ships onto shores in the east, in poor countries that can not afford to causing many negative environmental impacts, but providing many jobs for men in Bangladesh.