This is a summary of a published opinion piece by an outside author. The views are the author’s, not Maritime News BD’s.
In The Daily Star, Ahamedul Karim Chowdhury — a maritime, logistics and supply chain policy analyst and former head of ICD Kamalapur and Pangaon Inland Container Terminal — argues that the deaths of nine workers at a Sitakunda yard in August show the need to redesign the industry. “Certification is periodic but danger is continuous,” he writes.
He proposes treating the Hong Kong Convention as a minimum rather than a ceiling; phasing out primary dismantling on open, unengineered beaches in favour of purpose-built facilities; studying a shared green recycling zone, with Moheshkhali-Matarbari as a candidate; and a time-bound transition with incentives such as long leases and green finance. He also calls for factory inspectors, explosives and environment regulators and the Ship Recycling Board to share a system for vessel-specific gas tests, permits and stop-work orders.
Event date: 17 August 2026
Sources: This report summarises the following original reporting. Facts and quotations are attributed to these sources.
- The Daily Star (opinion), Sitakunda tragedy calls for a redesign of the ship recycling industry (17 August 2026)
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File photo: a Chattogram ship-breaking yard. Photo: Naquib Hossain from Montreal, Philadelphia, Dhaka / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This article is a summary prepared by Maritime News BD from the report(s) listed above; it was not independently reported by Maritime News BD.
