Government delaying cleaner leather sector
12/05/2008
The tanning industry in Bangladesh is still on course to move to a new purpose-built site near Dhaka with a central effluent treatment plant, but, according to industry leaders, the government is causing delays that make it unlikely the project will be complete on schedule in 2010.
The government said five years ago it would address water quality issues in the River Buriganga, which flows through the capital by building new facilities in the suburb of Savar. It called this initiative the Dhaka Tannery Estate Project (DTEP). However, it took until 2005—the original deadline—to get the project off the ground.
There was a change of government in 2006 and planned elections since then have been postponed with a caretaker government attempting to steer Bangladesh through its current political crisis.
The tanning industry says that under the original DTEP agreement, the government had promised to compensate them for the disruption to their business the changeover would mean, and also that it would provide the funding to build the central effluent treatment plant and hand it over to the tanners to run after two years. Now the government says it wants the industry to pay for the treatment plant, which has still not been built.
The president of the Bangladesh Tanners' Association, Harun Or Rashid, has told local media: “The government has yet to give us our compensation or build the facilities, even though we have narrowed down our demand to the minimum level. It is unlikely we can make full-scale relocation by 2010 as it will take at least two and a half years to complete the work on the central effluent treatment plant.”
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