River water being polluted by Hazaribagh tannery wastes The Rayer Bazar region of the capital, where we live in, is located midway between the two infamous slaughter houses-one literally and other metaphorically. The literal one, of course, is the well-known Badhyabhumi (killing field) where some of the nation's best sons were slaughtered in 1971 by the despicable Al-Badr Bahini, the lackeys of Pakistan's occupation forces. The other one is a cluster of 200 tanneries in Hazaribagh. They do not use weapons of the type wielded by Nizami's hordes but more lethal than guns and grenades. They dispense toxic gas, life- threatening chemicals and industrial effluents with carefree abandon. The effects, as everybody knows, are horrendous. In fact, if someone could collect data on environment pollution, the Hazaribagh region could well get into the Guinness Book of Records as the most polluted spot on this planet.
The irony is that while the long arm of the law has finally reached Al-Badr chief Nizami for slaughtering people, the tanners are showered with generous bank loans, subsidies, export trophies and exalted CIP (Commercially Important Person) titles-a bitter reminder of neo-liberal and crony capitalism at its worst.
POLLUTION FROM TANNERIES: The obnoxious and foul smelling gas spewed by the tanneries carries death warrants for people living in the adjoining localities as far away as Rayer Bazar, Dhanmandi, Mohammadpur, Lalbagh, Basila and Kamrangir Char. The death does not come quickly but in small doses in the form of respiratory and other diseases induced by the chemical-laden air. The obnoxious gas also damages the household metallic appliances and utensils. Gold ornaments quickly turn black and the life of electronic goods is cut short.
Apart from the invasion by aerial route, the tanneries daily discharge nearly 22,000 square metre of untreated toxic effluents to the water body and produce 150 metric tons of equally pernicious solid waste. These eventually get into the Buriganga turning this once beautiful river into an ugly water body and, in the process, contaminate the food chain.
THE DEFIANT TANNERIES: For ages, the tanners of Hazaribagh have defied government orders, pleadings of the environment activists and even repeated High Court edicts to relocate to a safer location. They raise one issue or the other to justify their flippancy. This writer doesn't remember when the attempts to relocate the tanneries from the densely-populated city started to take root but he was a member of the committee set up in the mid-eighties to formulate plans for relocations. The Committee formulated plans and set deadlines but the tanners remained as defiant as ever. This scribe lost track of what happened next but recently came across an article in the website that helped piece together the missing links. We are tempted to quote verbatim an extract from this article without editing its linguistic aberrations:
"UNDP, took a very rigorous step to set up a effluent treatment plant in Hazaribagh area, this was to the tune of 56 million US dollars. However, the BNP government on a certain brainwave suggested that the entire UNDP project would be a waste of time and resources, if the whole of the tanneries were transplanted elsewhere, say like in Savar. So the story has now succumbed to the cart being put before the horse. We must shift before we can be clean. Pollution is now overwhelming the district of Hazaribagh, the entire eco-system of the Buriganga river is dead, as is the problem of effluent end of pipe (EOI) arrangement.
"The threat is also to seabirds, fishes, seasonal ducks and geese, river otters and indigenous goral's and porpoises." (Extracts from an article entitled 'Leather Industry Development' by Mustapha Saha Niwas Ali, July 09, 2011, News from Bangladesh, Daily News monitoring service).
After decades of foot-dragging, the government is setting up necessary infrastructure with a central effluent treatment (CETP) at Savar to relocate the Hazaribagh cluster. The response from many tanners, however, continues to remain rather lukewarm. It is surprising that while the world communities are waking up to save the environment, our industrial enterprises continue to turn the clock back by bombarding toxic waste on millions of helpless souls in quest of filthy lucre.
WEAK POLITICAL WILL: Until the recent years, the governments that ruled the country from time to time did not apply seriously to relocate the tanners. On the contrary, they blessed the tanners with all kinds of incentives-lollipops, as one analyst says, in the form of duty drawbacks, tax exemptions, subsidies and generous bank loans. The government even clamped export duty on wet blue leather to ensure its availability for manufacturing crust and other value-added products. The banks also granted loans on easy terms but Tk 9.00 billion reportedly remained classified. On the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha, the government deployed law enforcement agencies to prevent hides and skin from slipping out of the capital and out of the country. In return for the privilege, the tanners formed a syndicate to collect hides and skin at throwaway price. It deprived the poor boys and girls of the orphanages and madrasas who thrive mainly on donations from sales of these hides and skin.
MISPLACED PRIORITY: In the psyche of ordinary public as well as many policy makers, foreign exchange is engrained as a demi-god that they wrongly think can buy happiness. The undue obsession for promotion of export and the government's readiness to walk extra miles to support the export industry are the principal leverage they employ to ignore the welfare of the people. In spite of the rich package of incentives and other kinds of largesse, the export sector, with the exception of apparel industry, has failed to progress much beyond the level achieved decades ago. For instance, between FY 2000-01 to FY 20013-14, Bangladesh's export of leather rose from $253 million to $483 million while Vietnam, possessing almost similar endowment of raw material and manpower, has progressed from $1 billion in 2000 to $10 billion in 2013. On the other hand, the amount of damage caused to the environment, men and flora and fauna by the Hazaribagh cluster would far outweigh the so-called 'precious' foreign exchange that the tanners earn.
NO TIME TO WASTE: We cannot wait for an eternity for the tanners to wake up from hibernation. Fortunately, the government and the High Court are orchestrating a move to relocate the tanners to its new site quickly. The Industries Minister has recently sounded a warning that the units that fail to move within the March deadline would be closed down.
BOTTOM LINE: The bottom line is that the tanners must be made to move quickly. The fourteenth century Turkic Sultan Mohammad Bin Tughlak relocated his capital from Delhi to Deogira-a distance of 700 miles within the space of a few months. His counterpart, Field Marshall Ayub Khan moved the capital from Karachi to Rawalpindi (before finally moving to Islamabad), a distance again of almost 700 miles within a year or so. The moral that we can draw from these instances is that at some point of time, one needs to be harsh and hasty even if it involves some degree of temporary hardships. The irony again is that we are engaged in a perpetual battle of wits with a few tanners to move the veritable death traps to a nearby neighbourhood at Savar.
The writer is a former central bank official.
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