Owners attach new conditions
New conditions put forward by the owners could further delay the long over due shifting of the highly polluting leather industry from Hazaribagh a densely populated area in the city to Savar, officials said.
The owners want permission to raise commercial and residential buildings on the land at Hazaribagh after shifting their tanneries to Savar, 30 km from the capital.
Opposing Rajuk’s plan to create a park at the Hazaribagh area to be vacated by the tannery factories, Bangladesh Tanners’ Association chairman Shahin Ahmed told New Age Saturday they want the government’s intervention in the matter.
‘We are opposing the Rajuk plan,’ he said.
‘We sought government’s intervention to make Rajuk agreeable to allow us permission to use the vacated area for raising commercial and residential buildings,’ he said.
He said the new demands were jointly put forward by BTA and Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters’ Association.
He said that the demand was conveyed to Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation in a letter.
The two associations made the relocation conditional to new demands.
They also called for relaxing the requirement that each factory should keep 33 per cent of space open at new plots allotted at the tannery park at Savar.
They also demanded immediate release of Tk 250 crore as compensation for relocating the factories to Savar.
In 2003, the government assigned BSCIC to implement the relocation project in line with a High Court directive.
The court directed the government to save the Buriganga threatened by 25,000 tonnes of untreated wastes and 60,000 cubic metres of toxic chemicals released into the river everyday by the tanneries.
The government failed to relocate the tanneries in 10 years.
BSCIC chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder said the tanners and leather factory owners had been attaching unacceptable conditions one after another.
The implementation of the project for relocation has already been delayed, he said.
He said the BSCIC issued several notices to 150 tanneries to vacate the place.
It is for the government to decide how it would use the vacated area, he said.
A recent inter-ministerial meeting chaired by finance minister Abul Ma’al Abdul Muhith was forced to agree to bear the cost of setting up a central effluent treatment plant or CETP at the new tannery park at Savar.
The CETP is estimated to cost around Tk 550 crore.
Under a memorandum of understanding with the government signed in 2007, the tannery owners had agreed to repay the CETP cost in 15 years.
Environmentalists have expressed repeated disappointment over the long delay in relocating the tanneries doubling the shifting costs.
They blamed the tannery owners for the undue delay and the cost escalation.
In August, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council approved the new relocation project doubling cost to Tk 1,079 crore from Tk 545.36 crore due to the delay in implementation.
In 2003, BSCIC took the project to build a 199.40-care new leather industry park with 205 factory plots, with a modern central effluent treatment plant and dumping yard.
-With New Age input
