Public Story
The metal men
While it is not the largest shipyard in the country (that honor belongs to the Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard), the Dhaka yard in the town of Keraniganj shares the seeming disregard for worker safety that can be found in similar industrial sites around the country. The facilities, which employ around 15,000 workers at around $5 a day, work to both break down massive shipping vessels as well as create new ships from the parts. Workers can be seen torches and welding equipment to tears huge pieces of metal from the vessels, sans eye, hand, or face protection. Other workers will be found scaling the tall ships on ramshackle ladders or strolling along the high edges of the ship decks, the only thing to keep them from falling is their own balance. Injuries are common on the site, but the buzz of activity doesn’t stop.
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