Bangladesh high court extends tannery relocation deadline
01/03/2010
The High Court of Bangladesh announced on February 28 that tanneries operating in the Hazaribagh area of Dhaka, the traditional centre of the tanning industry in the country, will have an extra six months to complete a forced move to a new industrial site.
In June 2009, the government told tannery operators that they had to move away from Hazaribagh to the new site at Savar by February 28. Tannery owners and the Bangladesh Tanners Association had lobbied for a two-year extension, but as recently as the end of January, government ministers were insisting that the industry would have to meet the February 28 deadline and there would be no concessions at all.
The dispute over the new site at Savar centres on the project’s common effluent treatment plant, which is still not complete. The tanning industry and the government have been arguing over who should pay for the common effluent treatment plant since 2003. Discussions stalled when the country had only a caretaker government between January 2007 and December 2008.
The most recent suggested solution is that the tannery owners will pay for the common effluent treatment plant, but that the government will encourage the country’s banks to make capital more easily available to them.
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