Pakistan shipbreaking in stormy waters

Archiv – The deteriorating law-and-order situation in Pakistan’s Balochistan province has adversely affected shipbreaking activity at Gadani where, over the last three months, the number of ships bought for scrapping has plummeted to four. By comparison, shipbreakers at Gadani scrapped some 44 vessels last year weighing a total of 188 242 ldt (light displacement tonnes).Pakistan | The deteriorating law-and-order situation in Pakistan’s Balochistan province has adversely affected shipbreaking activity at Gadani where, over the last three months, the number of ships bought for scrapping has plummeted to four. By comparison, shipbreakers at Gadani scrapped some 44 vessels last year weighing a total of 188 242 ldt (light displacement tonnes).
Conditions worsened three months ago when Azam Malik, Chairman of the Pakistan Ship Breakers Association (PSBA), was assassinated in the town of Hub as he returned from his shipbreaking yard at Gadani. Buyers subsequently stopped visiting Gadani to purchase their ship plate and other scrap material requirements.
Some 15 shipbreaking enterprises operate around 140 plots at Gadani but the place has taken on a deserted look and many people have been left without jobs, according to a PSBA spokesman. If no measures are taken to improve law and order in the area, breaking activity will cease and the government will be deprived of sizeable revenues, he adds.
Shipbreaking activity has also been hit by the rejection of Engineering Development Board proposals for the revival of the industry. Instead, the government increased general sales tax on ship plate from Rs 3500 to Rs 4848 per tonne in its 2008-09 budget.
Pakistan specialises in breaking large vessels, mostly oil tankers. As recently as 1999, Gadani was the second largest shipbreaking area in the world after Taiwan and by far the largest in the sub-continent.