Two people have died and 13 were injured in an accident at the Ziri Subedar ship breaking yard in Bangladesh.
The incident happened during the dismantling of a 5,000-teu containership, formerly named CSL Virginia (built 2005), according to a report from NGO Shipbreaking Platform.
The Brussels-based lobby group named the dead men as 35-year-old Aminul Islam and 27-year-old Tushar Chakma.
The yard, located in Chattogram, has been temporarily closed following the accident.
NGO Shipbreaking Platform said so far this year 15 yard workers have died in the Chattogram region.
Rizwana Hasan, chief executive of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) and a NGO Shipbreaking Platform board member said in a statement: “I also wonder how long it will take for the West to act on these deaths and stop sending vessels to the unsafe yards of Bangladesh.”
NGO Shipbreaking Platform said the ship had arrived in Chattogram in February after narrowly avoiding the European Union’s Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR) which started January this year.
As a European Union flagged vessel under SRR the vessel would have been required to be dismantled at a EU approved recycling yard.
The ship was earlier involved in a collision with a ferry off Corsica in October last year causing an oil spill.
It then switched flags from the Cyprus to Liberia, and was renamed Virgin Star, before it took its final voyage to the breaker’s yard, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform said.
