Daily Times reported that the suspension of oxygen gas supply by the a company has severely hit the ship breaking industry, throwing thousands of workers out of employment, while as many as 78 scrap ships worth billions of rupees are waiting at the docks for necessary dismantling.

They said that after gas producing plant of a company at Gadani went out of order, other companies taking advantages of the situation have started blackmailing the ship breakers and are demanding heavy deposits for supply of gas.

The case of suspension of gas also happened in past but this time situation is worst and the scraping activity has almost come to a halt since the last 17 days, causing colossal losses to the ship breakers.

Ship breaking activity had intensified at Gadani where presently around 70 ships are beached for dismantling since last three months. Fearing re-imposition of customs duty and sales tax in the new budget importers were trying hard to bring in as many vessels as they can before the end of the current fiscal year.

Due to brisk ship dismantling activity presently around 10,000 to 12,000 workers mostly from NWFP, were working in the scorching heat and under highly hostile environment.

Source said that about 575,000 tonnes of ships are anchored at the docks, but due to lack of supply of oxygen gas, Gadani workers were under employed, as they were compelled doing only those works, which could be done manually.

(Sourced from Daily Times)