Not this one
the Bangladesh government has banned the decommissioned Norwegian cruise liner, S S Norway, from entering its shores after receiving information that it was carrying 1,250 tonnes of asbestos. The ban came after the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (bela) threatened legal action if the ship was allowed into Bangladesh's territorial waters. The ban has led Hajji Lokman Hakim, a ship merchant who offered to buy the ship for us $12 million, to drop his plan.
But Bangladesh's authorities are taking no chances. Zafar Ahmed Chowdhury, secretary, ministry of environment and forests, said his ministry has asked Bangladesh's department of shipping, and the country's navy and Coast Guard to make sure that the ship did not enter Bangladesh's territorial waters. Chowdhury said the matter was also taken up with the shipbreakers in Sitakunda Yard in the port city of Chittagong. Sitakunda is the principal source for the steel rerolling mills that feed the country's booming construction sector. Bangladesh's public sector steel mills have been out of operation for over a decade. In 2004-2005, the construction sector accounted for over 9 per cent of Bangladesh's gdp.
"In Bangladesh, steel plates extracted from broken ships and rerolled into iron rods are considered ideal for constructing buildings and bridges,' said an expert. International racketeers have found this to their advantage. Decommissioned ships full of bilge and ballast water have found their way to Sitakund and heavily polluted the area in its vicinity.
Attempts to dump toxic wastes in Bangladesh date back to the late 1980s when there was a move to import two ship-loads of toxic cargo from Philadelphia, usa, under the pretext of importing fuel for generating electricity. The move was aborted after intense pressure from the media. The authorities, however, failed to track and prevent Khian Sea, another ship laden with toxic waste, from dumpting its burden in Bangladesh. Then, in 1991, two shiploads of zinc oxy sulphate fertiliser mixed with lead and cadmium found their way to Bangladesh from the us. After another media campaign, the government stopped distributing the fertiliser and sued the us exporters. About half this cargo remains stacked in government godowns for being shipped back. Chowdhury maintains that history won't be repeated this time and the asbestos-laden S S Norway, currently docked off the Malaysian coast, will not enter Bangladesh's territorial waters.