News

Toxic Ship 'Riky' to be "mercilessly driven out" Green Groups call on Danish and Indian Governments to follow SCMC directives immediately

New Delhi, 30 May, 2005 - Environmental groups and labour unions, both Indian and international, have welcomed the unprecedented, highly progressivere commendation by the Chairman of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on hazardous waste (SCMC) that the Danish ferry "RIKY" should be sent back to its source country. In an unequivocal message to the Chairperson of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Dr. G. Thyagarajan has taken a strong view of the illegal beaching of the "Riky", and instructed the GPCB that "Riky must be mercilessly driven out of Indian sovereign territory without any further loss of time.'' He has also asked for a high-level investigation into this matter.

The "RIKY" was illegally beached at Alang on April 19, 2005, despite the fact that the Danish Environment Minister, Ms. Connie Hedegaard, had alerted Indian authorities about it's impending arrival, and requested her Indian counterparts not to allow it to enter India. Since the ship had not been
stripped of the hazardous substances on board, its arrival in India constituted a clear violation of the Basel Convention. Despite this foreknowledge, the ship was allowed to beach at Alang with falsified papers,
and its name was changed from "Kong Fredrik IX" to "Riky" to cheat the authorities in India.

"We appeal to the Danish authorities to immediately prosecute the offending ship-owner and other agencies involved in the transaction of Riky and also make immediate arrangements to retrieve the ship from India for decontamination," said Jacob Hartmann, Campaigner, Greenpeace Nordic, "In the light of the SCMC recommendations, we are confident that both Denmark and India will implement their obligations towards the Basel Convention in letter and in spirit, without wasting further time."

"The Chairman of the SCMC has sent a clear signal that no one can make a mockery of Indian and International rules, and that they will not allow India to become a dumping ground for hazardous wastes from OECD countries. Ship owners all over the world will have to change their current polluting
practices. The Riky case has also exposed that all is not well in Alang and that the current practices of cheating, fraud and falsification of documents must be changed," said Madhumita Dutta of the Corporate Accountability Desk, The Other Media.

"The SCMC has made a landmark recommendation by saying 'If the ship is considered hazardous by Denmark, the Basel Convention requires India also to treat it as such.' By stating this, Dr. Thyagarajan has clarified the most debated section of the directives of the Basel Convention and made it
explicit that if the exporting country considers an end-of-life vessel a hazardous waste, so must the importing country," pointed out Jim Puckett, of the Basel Action Network.

Greenpeace, Basel Action Network, CITU and the Corporate Accountability Desk of the Other Media are campaigning globally for clean ship-recycling, demanding that the onus of cleaning-up of hazardous waste on board end-of-life vessel lies with the ship owner and the exporting country and
not the ship-breaker. They are also demanding that ALL incoming end of life ships should bear a certification of prior informed consent and a declaration of decontamination before they are granted permits for scrapping.

Links

- Dr. G. Thyagarajan's letter (PDF format)