Toxic tanneries forced to move pollute new Bangladesh site
savar, bangladesh — Bangladesh tanneries prepping leather for shoes, belts, wallets and purses are dumping toxic chemicals into a river at a new industrial complex more than a year after the government shut them down for poisoning a different river and using child labour.
“It’s killing the river. The colour of the water has changed,” Abdus Shakur, a local resident who works as a day laborer, told The Associated Press last week. “I have been living here for decades and the condition of the river has changed dramatically over the last year.”
Turning cow hides into soft, hairfree leather can be a dirty business, and in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, the former home to more than 150 tanneries, the air a year ago was so noxious with chemicals and rotting hide trimmings that it was repeatedly named one of the most polluted places on earth by environmentalists. The adjacent Buriganga River, a source of drinking water for 180,000 people, was considered poisoned.
In April 2017, under international pressure, the government shut off power at the Hazaribagh tanneries, ordering them to move to a new tannery industrial complex in Savar. Now the AP has learned that factories at the new location are draining chemicals into the Daleshwari River and dumping toxic waste in open fields. Although there are sewage treatment and effluent systems, they are inadequate to process all of the waste.
“This was a disaster foretold,” said Richard Pearshouse, associate director of the environment program at Human Rights Watch. “Everyone convinced themselves that the main issue was technical — a lack of a central effluent treatment plant — and not political. But Bangladesh’s tanning industry will be plagued by its fundamental problems until government authorities finally get serious about enforcing laws.” —