Since the beginning of 2022, out of the eighteen accidents that shook the Bangladeshi shipbreaking industry, six have taken place at yards owned by Kabir Steel Re-Rolling Mills (KSRM), a concern of large conglomerate Kabir Group.

In the last week of January, Mohammad Bakul Pramanik was fatally hit by an iron girder. In February, while scrapping the vessels PIONEER (IMO 9048110) and MED (IMO 9002207), owned by South Korean Polaris Shipping and Singaporean Hin Leong Trading respectively, Ariful Islam Sujan lost his life, whilst Mujidul Haque, Shalim and Md Rofiqul got severely injured. On May 25, Shahjahan, who was working as a cutter foreman on the Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) vessel LADINDA (IMO 7361269), owned by Indonesian shipping company EMP Malacca Strait SA, suffered a spine injury due to the fall of a big iron plate.

This series of accidents follows years of tragic deaths and injuries at Kabir’s yards. In 2020, three accidents took the lives of three workers and impaired another three. In 2021, out of five incidents at KSRM yards, one was fatal. Despite the repeated interventions of the Bangladesh Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments and the Ministry of Industries, which included a ban on operations and imports at one of the KSRM yards for four months,  Kabir’s management continues to put the lives of workers at risk.