Staff Reporter :
Blaming immediate past Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu, Bangladesher Samyabadi Dal General Secretary Dilip Barua on Saturday said had he (Amu) taken the relocation issue seriously, the shifting of the chemical godowns from the old town would have been easy.
Dilip Barua, who was former Industries Minister, came up with the remarks after visiting the site of Chawkbazar chemical blaze.
“It would have been easier to relocate chemical godowns from Old Dhaka, had our Industries Minister (Amu) taken the issue seriously,” Barua said when he along with a 14-party alliance delegation visited to Churihatta area on Saturday afternoon.
“Chemical Merchant Association took a decision that the chemical business would be relocated to a land outside Dhaka when I was the minister. It was our pledge. But the whole process could not proceed due to some discreet issues,” he said.
“Social Corporate Responsibility has not developed in the way it should have been to make Dhaka livable and safe,” he alleged.
Dilip Barua said, the stakeholders could not force the government (to relocate). The building owners also cannot shrug off responsibility as they rented their godowns to chemical dealers to get higher rent, he observed.
The Home Ministry and the City Corporation should be more rigid while issuing license to chemical merchants, he advised.
A devastating inferno broke out at Old Dhaka’s Chawkbazar around 10:40pm on February 20, leaving 67 people dead on the spot. Medical report said all the victims were burned alive.
The victims are mostly pedestrians, people travelling by rickshaws and cars, residents of the buildings as well as owners and staff of the shops and warehouses.
The Chawkbazar fire, which sparked from a chemical warehouse, is the second deadliest chemical fire in the country after the 2010 Nimtoli incident.
