Page 80 - Navy Journal 219

RESPONSE TO MARINE POLLUTION IN PARTICULAR
OIL SPILL: BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE

Captain S M Jasimuzzaman, (TAS), BSP, PCGMS, psc, BN

Introduction

Traditionally the marine environment of Bangladesh is a safe place for dumping
anything and everything either intentionally or by default, has turned into an area
of multiple vulnerabilities at present. Disposing waste in the ocean, many people
thinks it in the way like, so what? In the coastal regions, due to rapid
urbanizations and building good number of industries like cement, fertilizer,
docks, refineries etc including newly emerged ship-breaking yards on and
around the city connected to rivers made the situation more difficult, polluting
the natural waters to a great extent. It was reported that about 250 kg of
polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) are released from each ship in the ship breaking
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yards of Chittagong area. Besides, the sea users and ships berthed at ports found
the marine area of Bangladesh as the dumping zone for garbage and sewage
dispose. In addition the plastics, domestic cleaners, daily wastes etc drained
down the sink into the rivers are also polluting the water body significantly. In
Bangladesh marine pollution is quite prominent because of its unregulated
operations of vessels, lax application of laws, resources deficiencies for
monitoring / surveillance and deliberate contamination by ships at the port. It
may be mentioned that the Annual World Economic Forum on 25 Jan 2018
ranked Bangladesh as the second worst country in curbing environmental
pollution.

On the other hand, Bangladesh is a maritime country with more than 90% trades
are sea based and often used by India, Nepal and Bhutan for transshipment. More
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than 3500 seagoing ships (3017 ships in 2015-2016 as per CPA news, Oct 2016
Vol 1) visit Bangladesh port, carrying around 4 million tons of crude and refined
oil each year. In the current year, Bangladesh is expected to import around 1.42
million tons of petroleum by June 2020. These seagoing ships vis-a-vis the
tankers engaged in transshipment operations in support of these activities
presents a fairly high risk of oil pollution. An oil spill incident in the Bay of
Bengal will cause great damage to the fisheries, marine growth, transportations,

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/port_of_chittagong
2. CPA news, Oct 2016 vol 1

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