Ship-specific observations on gas (plate) cutting
The work activities 8, 9 and 10, as outlined in the ship recycling
plan articulated by Hiremath et al. (2015), claimed rather major
share of workforce and time required for complete recycling. The
work activity 8 involved removal of insulating materials from vessel
and work activity 9 involved cutting of the ship into slices. Slices
were further cut, segregated and loaded onto the trucks in work
activity 10.
Itwas observed that typically six steps were performed between
work activity 8, 9 and 10. These observations were further validated
through interviews with safety officers, production managers, yard
owners and workers of 45 randomly selected ship recycling yards
(other than yards selected for investigation) in Alang. Fig. 3 depicts
a typical ship-specific steps followed in work activity 8, 9 and 10
while recycling a bulk carrier ship in Alang yards.
It was observed that at first, the bow of the ship was sliced
by a team of gas cutters using the hand-held oxy-LPG torches
(step 1 in Fig. 3). After slicing the bow, workers could
comfortably enter and exit the first hold of the ship. The front
wall of the first hold was sliced first followed by the sidewalls
depending upon the availability of space to make the slice fall
outside the ship in the inter-tidal zone. Lack of space makes the
workers to slice the back wall of first tank first and then side
through this research