Joynal Abedin Khan :
The supply of rawhides in the city’s Hazaribagh continued on Friday with the help of some police personnel, defying the government’s ultimatum.
At least five trucks and two vans carrying rawhides were unloaded in the areas early Friday, local sources said.
Ibrahim Leather Limited bought huge rawhides brought by three trucks from Chittagong around 10:00am, they said.
The goods were later stored in the factories with the help of an Police Inspector and some ruling party men, they claimed.
Meanwhile, after failing to relocate tanneries from capital’s Hazaribagh to Savar within the deadline i.e. March 31, the government has deployed police to check arrival of raw hides at Hazaribagh.
Industries Minister Ami Hossain Amu in February gave the tanners time upto March 31 to move to the Savar Tannery Park, and said that raw hides would not be allowed to enter Hazaribagh from April 1.
Mir Alimuzzaman, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Hazaribagh Police Station, rejected the accusation of entry of rawhides in the factories and said, “With the deadline over, police have been deployed on four entry-points of Hazaribagh in the morning and it will continue until further instruction.”
“We are also keeping an eye so that raw hides cannot enter the area by any other means,” the police official said. Visiting in the morning this reporter observed that some tanning factories were being closed as part of the relocation process, while some others shut for the weekend. But at few places workers were found processing rawhides, but no official was found. Rintu, a worker, said that they had been stockpiling the raw materials for about a month so that they could use them now. Meanwhile, a number of owners and businessmen claimed that the government could not yet provide power and gas connection at Savar Tannery Park. They claimed that the government’s decision was almost autocratic and harmful to the industry.
In the meantime, the owners of 155 tanning factories in Hazaribagh were asked at least on 20 occasions to shift to Savar. Twenty-eight of the owners were served legal notices in January and 10 owners were summoned by the High Court on March 23 for disregarding the court order to relocate. Explaining the environmental impacts of the tanning factories, Industries Minister Amu on January 13 said, “The Buriganga, the Shitalakkhya and all other rivers are dying because of these tanneries. If the tanners do not abide by the government’s order, the allotment of their plots in Savar will be cancelled.” Earlier, the High Court in 2001 issued a set of directives in this regard and the government took the initiative to set up a tannery park in Savar and relocate the factories there. The construction of the park was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council in August 2003, but it has not been completed even now. Though the tanners were initially ordered to move there by June 2015, the deadline was postponed quite a few times, as the Central Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) in Savar was not fully set up. The CETP partially came into operation in January this year.
