Intense pollutants threaten the surroundings of the Savar Tannery Industrial Zone (STIE), as the structure of two forged waste dumps is expected to be delayed for a few months.
Currently, 130 of the 155 tanneries are active in the STIE. On a normal day, operational tanneries produce about 60 tons of forged waste.
In the absence of the courts, all waste is stored in an empty open space, contaminating the locality.
If this continues until Eid-ul-Azha, a serious crisis may arise. In fact, the 3 months of the devout feast of animal sacrifice, some 180 tons of forged waste is produced every day through the tanneries.
Contractors provided lower quality metal for the hangars for the structure sites following the specifications discussed in the tender, said Delwar Hossain, leader of the effluent processing plant (ETP) team at STIE.
Construction of the hangar for one of the 360,000 square foot structure sites scheduled for the final touch in August, he said.
The contractor has once again had the task of supplying the specified steel and the hangar structure is about to be completed, which is likely to be completed until December, Hossain said.
To date, the government has allocated 10 trillion Tk for the structure of the two structure sites, the other 216,000 feet, he said.
“I hope . . . until January next year, we take over the hangars of the Chinese company. “
He also talked about a third-structure site that would be built and controlled through a company specializing in waste disposal and intermediate product creation.
The tender has already been awarded to a local company to handle the waste, he said.
Although counterfeit waste deserves to end up in a landfill once the TIA is fully operational, Hossain was involved in that if such a waste solution was not present, it is likely that any of the sites will overflow within a year.
Construction of the hangars in the two landfills scheduled to begin in March this year, said Jitendra Nath Paul, director of STIE.
But it was delayed due to the epidemic of the coronavirus pandemic. Construction, despite everything, began in June, he said.
The government is implementing plans to recycle counterfeit waste, Paul said.
Regarding the final touch of the structure of the Central ETP (CETP) in STIE, he said that its automation and online systems are in the process of implementation.
As the CETP structure also faced delays, the government began to allow individual companies to build their own ESF.
This allows them to temporarily download Leather Working Group (LWG) certifications and therefore appropriate costs from foreign stores and brands.
Due to poor adoption of LWG’s global criteria for raw leather remedy, Bangladeshi exporters have not benefited from the global body’s environmental certifications and compliance with the leather goods sector.
Bangladesh will have to download a 65 according to the penny of the overall ratings used in the LWG certification to download the qualification in the silver category.
Out of a total of 1,365 marks, approximately two hundred are expected to be received through government compliance, adding the presence of a tannery site, and the remaining 1,165 marks are expected to be received through tanners.
However, maximum tanners are not yet able to meet LWG standards.
This does not yet leave them the option to sell leather and similar products, such as footwear, to some non-compliant Chinese factories and settle for a 40% decrease in costs than foreign tariffs.
So far, it has allowed two tanneries to build their own ESF.
The government moved the tanneries from Hazaribagh to Savar in 2017 to make a formal move to the leather sector, which has already invested Tk 7 billion so far and hired some 50,000 workers.
But it turns out that the newly created STIE is still far away not only physically, but also in case of intelligent operation, and does not bring intelligent news for the leather sector.