India: The Cause of the Bhopal Disaster

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1] In 1984, the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, made the history witnessed the worst industrial disaster ever in the world. The Bhopal disaster (Bhopal Gas Tragedy) happened by gas leak incident occurred at the night time of 2-3 AM in December of 1984. The result of this gas leak caused risks for more than half million people by exposing them to chemicals hazards; one of these chemicals is methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. Not only this, it caused an immediate deaths reached more than 2,000 people. In addition to that, others estimated that 8,000 people died after two weeks because of gas diseases.

The cause of the Bhopal disaster was found to be the "Corporate Negligence". The firm didn't have a good safety system in the working environment. They were filling the methyl isocyanate (MIC) tanks more than the level it required or needed, allowing safety systems that are unfit to use because of poor maintenance, and turning-off the system of safety in-order to save money.

At June 2010 and after investigating about all what happened, it found that the chairman of UCIL and Seven employees were convicted to the Bhopal disaster. They received the maximum punishment by the Indian Law, which it 2,000 $ fine for each in addition to two years prison.

2] For a better understanding of the Bhopal case, a study of the ethical code of the country is required, and according to The Indian Institution of Engineers “IEI”, the code of ethics for professional engineers is divided into three main articles. The first article, it contains codes about the social responsibility to uphold ethical values of the society. The second article, it contain codes about responsibility to maintain high standards. The th...

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...roblems were common in India by the time, however; the most common issue was the unawareness of the code of conduct as a whole. Managers are more aware of the code of ethics but when it comes to workers, they seem to not know anything about the code of ethics. Since not having much knowledge about the code of ethics, that means there is no other common problem. There are some suggestions to solve this problem. First, training sessions should be conducted regularly. Second, organizations must ensure that even the workers are told about the ethical posture of the organization. Third, there should be top-management champions to promote ethics in corporations, because it needs constant support; especially because ethics could conflict with profitability. These are the few suggestions that were created based on the knowledge gained from studying engineering ethics.

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