Breaking a ship’s back

As you travel towards Alang, you can’t miss the open air shops — albeit devoid of customers — displaying all manner of furniture, beds, refrigerators, washing machines and crockery, all cannibalised from luxurious passenger liners that came here to die.

You can buy a Romanian or British crockery set for less than Rs 300, imported chairs at 80 per cent less than similar chairs manufactured in India. If you’re in luck, you might get an antique treasure from a ship’s ruins.

Demand is so high that within a week these resellers (who buy the entire stock from ship breakers in bulk) sell off their entire ‘‘accommodation’’ items to either hotels owners or to locals in nearby areas. Shipbreakers, on the other hand, are interested only in steel.

But today, thanks to a massive rise in ship prices, shipbreakers are waiting for the right tide.

‘‘Shipowners all over the world are not interested in selling ships as freight rates are very high. Once freight rates come down, shipowners will sell ships at lower prices and we will be able to buy ships,’’ says Vinay Bansal, a local shipbreaker.

Indian shipbreakers are unable to buy ships for scrapping as it’s the Chinese companies which are offering better prices, their consumption having shot up due to Olympics 2008.

During the glory days, says Captain Y P Deulkar, port officer of Gujarat Maritime Board, you could hear the continuous crash of ship-breaking a mile away. Now, the noise of giant cranes smashing ships is infrequent enough to give ship-breakers sleepless nights.

With business down, the quality of living has fallen, especially among the workers. ‘‘Even before a ship arrives in our plot… the workers start queuing up for work,’’ says Bansal.

Interestingly, says he, it’s only the migrant workers from UP, Bihar and Orissa who work in Alang: the job is too tedious and laborious for anyone else. ‘‘There were no jobs in my native village in Orissa. In order to survive, I came here to search for a welder’s job. If any ship-breaker hires me, I can make upto Rs 200 a day which is a huge sum back home,’’ says Sooraj Mahato, a 45-year old skilled worker.

Safety is another issue which haunts the ship-breaking yard, though the Gujarat Maritime Board is making all out efforts to inculcate precaution measures among the workers and their employers. ‘‘As soon as a ship arrives we need all kinds of manual help to tear it apart… this place hums with activity. But as you can see, we have no jobs now… all the cranes’ booms are down and even lights inside the plots have been packed off,’’ he adds.

The good news? The fortunes of the industry could change quickly — just like the tide.