This toxic oil tanker which has been renamed several times is now set to be dismantled on Sitakunda beach. Photo: seapixonline.com

Playing down the environmental and public health concerns, the shipping ministry has allowed a ship-breaker to scrap an oil tanker blacklisted by environmental group Greenpeace for containing hazardous substances.
Environmentalists say the MT Enterprise--earlier christened as Ocean Enterprise, Atlantia, Taiko and the like following each re-registration--is riddled with asbestos, heavy and toxic metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, copper and zinc.
If dismantling the ship goes on as planned, it will pose serious threats to the fragile coastal marine ecology, they said.
The MT Enterprise is now waiting at the outer anchorage of Chittagong seaport, ready for scrap. The importer, Madina Enterprise, allegedly took out the No Objection Certificate (NOC) for the ship from the shipping ministry, managing the officials concerned.
Ship breakers had earlier attempted to bring in three more hazardous craft-- SS Norway, MT Alfaship and MT Apsheron-- to break at their Sitakunda facility, but failed in the event due to strong protests from environmentalists.
Experts say an oil tanker like the MT Enterprise, contains by default harmful materials like asbestos fibres, dust and heavy and toxic metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, copper and zinc.
Besides, these ships house other organometallic substances like tributyltin, PCBs and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and compressed gas.
It is learnt that the importer first clinched the shipping ministry's clearance providing wrong information.
As environmentalists raised voice against the move, the ministry's chief chemist, Dr Md Mosharaf Ashraf, later cancelled the NOC (No 08070384, issued on August 13), on grounds of the ship's being on the Greenpeace blacklist.
The importer later filed a writ petition to the High Court. The court, however, directed the people concerned not to beach the tanker.
The importer then produced to the court an inspection certificate issued by the shipping ministry, which said inspectors did not find anything hazardous in the ship, earning a go-ahead from the court.
The ministry however did not include the other party in the inspection process.
Allowing such ships into Bangladesh waters is a violation of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, 1989, which Bangladesh ratified in 1993.
Environmentalists are worried that importers will start bringing in more hazardous ships once they could break one such craft.
Up until 1970s, a significant number of aging ships ready for retirement was processed in Europe and the US, according to the International Labour Organisation's Workers Safety in Ship-Breaking Industries, published in 2001.
The business was later outsourced to Asia, not least Bangladesh, as its environmental risks came to the surface.
Meantime, local environmental organisation Save Environment Movement staged a human chain at Dhaka University yesterday, demanding that the MT Enterprise chug out of Bangladesh waters immediately.
Blaming vested interests for bringing hazardous ships in Bangladesh, the movement's chairman Abu Naser Khan said though international laws keep such vessels from interstate movement, the government has allowed the ship in ignoring the associated environmental and ecological dangers.
Seven other organisations expressed solidarity with the protest rally.