The death toll at Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards has risen again following an accident on Wednesday.
A worker aged 45 was killed and two more were injured when they were hit by a large aluminium tank in the Sitakunda area of Chattogram, also known as Chittagong, United News of Bangladesh reported.
The men were working on recycling an old vessel during the afternoon at Sagarika Shipbreaking Yard, according to Suman Banik, officer-in-charge of Sitakunda police station.
The three workers were taken to the nearby BSB Hospital, where Sadekur Rahman Bulbul, from Naogaon district, was declared dead.
Last year, Bangladesh’s ship-recycling sector suffered the most quarterly deaths ever recorded among workers.
Pressure group NGO Shipbreaking Platform said in October last year that the seven lives lost during July, August and September was a tragic record for the beaches of Chattogram.
Several weeks previously, the organisation said it had reported seven separate accidents that killed five workers.
Since then, two more fatalities had occurred.
On 18 September 2021, 26-year-old Liton Paul fell from the 113,000-dwt aframax Oro Singa (built 1999) during cutting operations at the SN Corp yard.
And on 29 September last year, a falling iron plate claimed the life of a 36-year-old worker named as Taslim on the 153,000-dwt suezmax Medan (built 1991) at a yard owned by Kabir Steel group.
Gas cyclinder explosion
That same month, domestic media also reported that the Bangladeshi recycling sector had suffered another fatality after a scrap trader was killed by an exploding gas cylinder.
The accident happened at Mother Steel Shipyard in Sitakunda.
A truck full of cylinders was being unloaded when a blast turned one of them into a deadly projectile that hit Nazim Uddin, 40, the Daily Star reported.
