The High Court on Wednesday ordered import of no ship for scrapping till the framing of necessary rules on ship-breaking in line with the directives it issued on March 17, 2009.
The bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Sheikh Md Zakir Hossain also gave the government three more months to frame the rules.
It also reprimanded the government for not framing the rules in violation of a verdict delivered by the High Court bench of Justice M Imman Ali and Justice Sheikh Abdul Awal on March 17, 2009.
No ship meant for scrapping will enter the Bangladesh territory till the framing of the rules as the government has failed to frame the rules in 23 months, it said.
In the verdict, the court had asked the government to frame the rules in three months based on the judgment that required the consideration of six laws — the Basel Convention 1989, Environment Conservation Act 1995, Environment Conservation Rules 1997, Bangladesh Labour Act 2006, Territorial Waters and Maritime Zones Acts 1974 and Marine Fisheries Ordinance 1983.
On Wednesday, the court ordered the government to report on the compliance of the verdict and the Wednesday directives to the court in three months.
It directed the government to form a committee to ensure the execution of the court orders to be passed from time to time in this regard and to issue clearance certificates or no objection certificates for the import of ships for scrapping.
Merely a committee composed bureaucrats cannot stop the entry of hazardous ships into the Bangladesh territory, frequent accidents causing deaths of workers at ship-breaking yards and damage to the environment and ecology, the court observed.
It ordered institution of the committee with experts concerned, including experts in nuclear science, medical science, chemistry and maritime issues and environmentalists, journalists, labour leaders and rights activists.
Before allowing import and scrapping of any vessels, no damage to the environment and ecology and safety, security, health and rights of the labourers concerned must be ensured, the court ordered.
The court passed the orders after hearing a petition filed by the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers’ Association, also petitioner of the writ petition in which the March 2009 verdict was given.
Moving the petition, the petitioner’s counsel Syeda Rizwana Hasan alleged that tactical avoidance by the government of the earlier court directions had led to ‘business as usual’ by the ship breakers killing 30 and crippling 25 ship-breaking labourers in 18 months since the judgment was passed.
She said that the government had been tactically rendering the High Level Technical Committee by not placing crucial issues for decisions before it and by setting up a few other committees to facilitate the entry of toxic ships into Bangladesh.
Rizwana told the court that the commerce ministry, in compliance with the verdict, on January 26 amended the Import Policy Order requiring the importers to obtain certificates from authorised agents that the ships to be imported would contain no hazardous materials and are safe.
Later, she said, the commerce ministry on April 11 relaxed the provision to facilitate ‘expansion of the emerging industry of ship-breaking’ in the face of a series of demonstrations staged by the Bangladesh Ship Breakers’ Association demanding that the clause incorporated in the Import Policy Order in line with the High Court directive should be dropped.
Appearing for the Ship Breakers’ Association, Rokanuddin Mahmud argued that it was not for the court to intervene in a policy decision of the government.
