The parliamentary standing committee on the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in Bangladesh has recommended shutting down the Hemayetpur-based Savar Tannery Industrial Estate as it does not have sufficient facilities to treat all liquid waste generated by the tanners.
Media reports maintained this adding the parliamentary body made this recommendation recently at the parliament even as the chief of the parliamentary watchdog Saber Hossain Chowdhury while interacting with the media maintained that the tanners generate around 40,000 cubic metres of liquid waste per day even if the industrial estate has capacity to treat around 25,000 cubic metres of liquid waste every day.
…This means around 15,000 cubic metres are dumped into the river (Dhaleshwari) without any treatment, causing severe pollution, said Saber Hossain Chowdhury.
It may be mentioned here that to prevent environmental pollution and protect the Buriganga river, Bangladesh Government in 2003 took an initiative to move all tanneries out of Dhaka’s Hazaribagh area and thus was built the Savar Tannery Industrial Estate on around 200 acres of land at Hemayetpur.
