Norwegian company urged to buy back SS Blue Lady, decontaminate

New Delhi, July 29 (UNI) The NGO Platform on Shipbreaking has demanded the Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) president Colin Veitch, former owner of the SS Norway (SS Blue Lady, ex-SS France), buy back the ship, completely decontaminate it of the over 1,200 tonnes of asbestos and other toxins before putting it up for sale.

In letter to Mr Veitch, the Platform, representing over a dozen Human Rights, public health, and environmental organisations from the world over, threatened to launch a protracted consumer campaign against the cruise line company if it failed to act.

The SS Norway was damaged by an engine room explosion in Florida in 2003. NCL subsequently sent the vessel to Germany and then to Malaysia and then sold it to Indian ship-breakers in the spring of this year.

The massive cruise ship contaminated with toxic waste materials is now anchored off the Alang ship-scrapping beaches in Gujarat.

''It is not acceptable that the environmental liabilities of this major tourism company be simply dumped on some of the poorest and most desperate workers in India,'' said Ingvild Jenssen, coordinator of the NGO Platform from Brussels.

''Regardless of who currently holds the purse strings for the ship, the moral responsibility remains with Norwegian Cruise Lines as beneficial owner for so many years, to take full responsibility and ensure that the toxic materials on board are safely removed and handled in optimal conditions in a developed country prior to recycling or further use,'' he said.

Like the Clemenceau, the export of the SS Norway from Germany and then from Malaysia has sparked global outrage among civil society groups, because NCL and SCL failed to decontaminate the vessel before export and instead is hoping to simply pass the toxic burden to India and some of the poorest workers on earth.

''The Indian shipbreaking yards do not have adequate facilities to manage asbestos in the optimal way and have no capacity at all to properly manage and destroy PCBs,'' said Mr Gopal Krishna of the Indian Platform on ship-breaking.

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