Tanners’ protest brings city to standstill
Efforts by the Indian authorities over the weekend to forcibly shift tanneries to the new Kolkata Leather Complex would appear to have gone badly awry.
Having already cut off water and electricity supplies, officials went into the city’s Tangra, Topsia and Tiljala tanning districts over the weekend to evict the remaining tannery owners and workers. Despite the involvement of the local police and the backing of a Supreme Court order, however, they were unable to make significant headway. In fact, their actions only served to inflame the situation as the tannery owners and workers took to barricading themselves into their premises. Yesterday, around 3,000 workers and their employers took to the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass during the afternoon rush hour in protest, bringing gridlock on one of the city’s main arterial routes.
The tanners say the leather complex at Bantala is nowhere near ready for them to occupy, pointing to the absence of a common effluent treatment plant, facilities for the storage of chrome waste and inadequate water and electricity supplies.
