Anisul Islam Noor :
The tannery owners are dilly-dallying to relocate their tanneries to Hemayetpur, Saver in Dhaka district within the government fixed deadline.
Most of the tannery owners have not yet started the relocation work despite repeated warnings of the government. Only 19 tannery owners so far have started the relocation work, official sources said.
Earlier, the government allocated 205 industrial plots to 155 tannery operators of Hazaribagh to relocate their industries outside Dhaka city in order to save the city residents from health hazard and make the Buriganga river toxic pollution free.
The government also had set December 2014 as deadline.
In this regard, the government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA) and Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association (BFLLFEA) on October 13 last year.
The work was supposed to be completed by December 2014. But they are likely to miss the timeframe as only 19 tannery owners only have started relocation work.
Now the tannery owners have given a new condition of long-term soft loan to enable them to build their factories at Hemayetpur although the government has already allocated Tk250 crore for them as compensation for relocation.
President of Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association (BFLLFEA) Engineer Abu Taher said that the tannery operators could not move to Hemayetpur on account of financial problem.
He demanded soft loan for 15 to 20 years from state owned banks to meet their relocation cost.
Meanwhile, the delay in the implementation of the Hazaribagh Tannery Relocation Project (HTRP) has increased the cost to Tk 10.78 billion from the preliminary amount of Tk 1.75 billion, six times higher than the initial project cost.
In 2003, the Ministry of Industries initiated the project of relocating Hazaribagh tannery to Savar Leather Industrial Estate (SLIE) at a cost of Tk 1.75 billion in order to save the capital city and the river Buriganga from pollution following a guideline submitted by United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) experts in 1996.
In fact, the tanneries operating in Hazaribagh for decades have been playing a key role in polluting the Buriganga. The river is now in a moribund state.
Meanwhile, every day about 21,000 cubic meters of untreated toxic waste from Hazaribagh tanneries continue to fall into the Buriganga River, research said.
The toxic materials discharged from the tanneries enter the food chain and water supply.
Not only the Buriganga, three other rivers around the Dhaka city are also suffering from serious pollution with losing their navigability.
Green activists have asked the government to realize an amount of Taka 25.29 billion as compensation from the owners of tanneries at Hazaribagh as they are responsible for pollution of the Buriganga, the Dhaka city’s lifeline.
The Poribesh Bachaon Andolan (POBA) Chairman Abu Naser Khan told the New Nation that the relocation work of 19 tanneries only out of 155 had now began. Therefore, it is not possible to complete the work within the deadline given by the government.
Naser Khan argued that the tannery owners must return the public money that government has invested under the relocation project if the BTA and BFLLFEA failed to shift their units within the stipulated time.
The relocation work of tanneries mainly includes building construction, installation of electricity connections and transfer of machineries.
It is learnt that ceaseless dumping of waste haphazard dredging and encroachment into the rivers around Dhaka city continue unabated. A recent survey on the wetland around Dhaka city says that all such lands will cease to exist in two decades if the encroachment continues at the present rate.
