The government’s move to relocate hazardous chemical warehouses and plastic factories from the congested neighbourhoods of Old Dhaka remains in limbo, 11 years after the initiative was taken in the aftermath of the Nimtoli inferno. Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) drafted a plan on relocating the chemical warehouses elsewhere after at least 124 lives perished in the chemical-induced fire in Nimtoli of Chawkbazar.
The BSCIC took eight years to finally take up the project and decided that the businesses would be shifted to the city’s outskirts in Keraniganj. The project was revised after another devastating fire in Chawkbazar’s Churihatta killed 71 people in February 2019. BSCIC Chemical Industrial Park was scheduled to be completed by June this year. Seventy per cent of the 310-acre project’s land development work has so far been completed. The project also involves the construction of a drainage system, boundary walls, fire station, a Central Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) and two jetties. The government planned to build two temporary sites in Tongi and Shyampur for the warehouses and factories, but the plan could not be executed.
In a survey in 2019, the Dhaka South City Corporation found 1,924 chemical warehouses in Old Dhaka. Ninety-eight percent of those were found to be moderately risky. Locals said the number would be much higher as owners of many other residential buildings rent spaces for warehouses taking advantage of lax monitoring by the authorities.
We reiterate our call to gear up the relocation of the hazardous chemical business without any delay to save people from the man-made disaster. We witnessed many inferno, we have proof and evidence that chemical warehouses are dangerous. The government had ordered and allocated a budget for the relocation, so why wait for another disaster.
