Demolition of GTS Finnjet is well under way in India

Employees at breakers' yard on just over EUR 1.00 a day

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Oil shines in the puddles left behind by the high tide, but the women wearing traditional costumes are too busy to complain. They wade through the puddles barefooted while carrying above their heads frames of beds that have been separated from the cabins of GTS Finnjet.
      Once the fastest passenger ferry in the world, GTS Finnjet is now well on its way of being totally demolished at the Alang breakers’ yard in Western India.
     
On Tuesday the rays from the tropical sun already reached Finnjet’s car deck, for the vessel’s bow cone has already been broken off. All that remains of the section is three separate chunks of metal – each of them several metres high – lying on the beach in front of the ship.
      From there the demolition men pull the pieces with tackles closer to the shore.
      An acrid smell arises from the welded sections, as the scrappers use blowpipes to cut them into suitable size for melting or rolling.
     
The scene at the Alang breakers’ yard - one of the largest of its kind in the world - is more than a little surreal.
      According to the local authorities, nearly 80 vessels have been beached there within the last six months alone. Their carcasses now decorate the landscape to the horizon.
      The hissing of the blowpipes, the murmur of the cranes, and the shouts of hundreds of workers continue as incessant background noise.
     
Around three hundred workers of the Rishi Ship Breakers company, which bought Finnjet, bustle about the former “Queen of the Baltic Sea”.
      They disassemble the ship for daily wages as low as just over a euro, the labourers explain.
      The Alang yard has long been criticised for its frequent accidents and enormous environmental problems.
      Although GTS Finnjet has already lost its bow, its stuffy interior is still half full of furnishings. Some of the workers still sleep on sofas in the ship’s Seaside Café, which has not been cleared yet.
      Although the breaking-up of Finnjet only started in earnest two weeks ago, haggling about who gets to sell which parts of the vessel is already in full swing at Alang.
      The tradesmen in the adjacent shanty town formed from a couple of hundred shacks and corrugated iron halls insist that they will find buyers to every single piece that comes from the ship.
     
The Finns bewildered by the fate of their beloved Finnjet will take cold comfort from the fact that even the Indians have noticed the vessel’s special character.
      “Finnjet is in remarkably good shape compared with most vessels that end up here”, says security supervisor Vijay Gohel of the Gujarat Maritime Board.
     
The breakers themselves are not unduly bothered by the good condition of the ship. Dismantling it puts bread on their table.
      “We do not love these ships. We just break them”, laughs one of the labourers.
      Even the fact that Finnjet was beached at Alang in June did not stop some Finnish enthusiasts from hoping that the vessel might still be salvaged.
      According to security officer Arun Pandey of Rishi Ship Breakers, such hopes were without foundation.
      “Once a ship has ended up in the graveyard, it will not return”, he says.
      Still, dismantling labyrinthine passenger vessels such as Finnjet is such a time-consuming exercise that it may well take a year before the ship has disappeared altogether from the Alang beach.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  GTS Finnjet headed for breakers yard (7.5.2008)
  Finnjet houses Katrina evacuees (20.12.2005)
  Finnish experts visit GTS Finnjet in India (3.9.2008)
  Attempts to get GTS Finnjet back to Finland continue (15.8.2008)
  Group of Espoo town councillors would have city buy Finnjet (22.5.2008)

Links:
  Finnjet (Wikipedia)
  Finnjetweb.com, an unofficial site and forum maintained by devotees of the vessel

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