Md Joynal Abedin Khan :
Thousands of poor beneficiaries, mainly orphans, have become hopeless following a record of lowest price of rawhide of sacrificial animals across the country this year.
A panic is prevailing among the consumers of getting back their money from the rawhide sale as they already gathered experience of unsold millions of pieces of rawhide.
They are now passing a horror period as they have lost usual income from selling rawhide of sacrificial animals.
Meanwhile, the customers and orphans have claimed that if the government does not take proper step to set the normal price immediately then they will have to face huge crisis for a long period.
In this backdrop, seasonal traders in Chattogram have left on streets the unsold rawhide of around 100,000 cattle following a steep price fall, according to media reports.
“We’ve removed four trucks of rawhide from Bahaddarhat. There appears to be 70 trucks more at Aturar Depot and Muradpur. Around 100,000 pieces of rawhide have been destroyed,” said Mobarak Ali, a ward councilor, who has been appointed by the Chattogram City Corporation as a monitor of cattle waste removal work.
Nazim Uddin, a seasonal trader, who brought 200 pieces of rawhide from Fatikchhari, said that he paid Tk 300 for each piece of rawhide, but the wholesalers were offering him only Tk 50 per piece.
“No-one was eager to buy rawhide at even Tk 50 a piece in the afternoon. So I am leaving these on the street,” he said.
Earlier, the government left the minimum prices unchanged from last year at Tk 45 to Tk 50 per square foot of rawhide of cattle in Dhaka and Tk 35 to Tk 40 sqf in the rest of the county. The price of goat hide was set at Tk 18 to Tk 20 and Tk 13 to Tk 15 for ‘Baqra’ goat hides across Bangladesh.
As per government set price, price of each 20 to 35 sq ft cattle rawhide should vary between Tk 900 and Tk 1,750, but the tanners are reportedly offering between Tk 300 and Tk 500 for the same.
As rawhide merchants refrained from buying from seasonal traders, they were forced to dump their collection. But tanners are blaming a ‘syndicate’ of merchant traders for not buying while waiting for buying at low cost at the end.
A poor orphan student from a madrasa in city’s Hazaribagh area, said, ” We are hopeless as maximum rawhide of sacrificial animals they collected remained unsold.”
