| Workers at the Alang shipyard,
on the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat, carve up a section
of a ship with oxyacetylene torches, with another as
yet untouched ship waiting to be broken in the background.
It takes from 3 to 12 months to completely scrap a ship,
depending on its size and complexity, with most of the
work carried out by hand.
Understanding the scale of what goes on at Alang is
very much a numbers game. Alang is like a small town
where 35,000 to 40,000 workers live, often with their
families, employed on 180 or so ship breaking yards
along the 13 km of beach. The site has a number of cinemas,
plenty of dhabas and its own temple, post office and
bank. In its first year of operation, 1982, Alang scrapped
5 ships, and by 1997 had the capacity to break up to
300 per year, with up to 300 people working on one boat.
The ship being broken in the image above was a Polish
registered cargo ship weighing in at 5,000 LDT, on which
180 people were working, with the superstructure gone
and the hull half demolished after 3 months work. Around
200 trucks per day leave Alang with material salvaged
from the ships, and the Indian Government earns 300
crore rupees (1 crore = 10 million) per year in foreign
exchange. Alang, Gujarat
NOTE: figures were correct at the time of our visit
in 1997.
More Alang images:
photo
no 09 ;
no 11 ;
work gallery |
