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Published: 12:12 AM, 23 September 2019

Forgotten environmental compliance of tannery

M S Siddiqui

The original tanneries were concentrated at Narayanganj from British period. Pakistan
government developed a planned tannery park at the heart of the Dhaka city in 1951 and
relocated the leather industries from rural area of Narayanganj to Dhaka city.

It may be a subject of research why government transferred environment polluting industries to

heart of city at Hazaribagh. It was a blander as the authorities failed to realize the
consequences tannery wastes were flown into Buriganga River.

The environmentalists and the buyers raised the objection and government blamed the
tanneries for pollution and asked them to set up Effluent treatment plant (ETP). The formation of
industrial plot at Hazaribagh in such a manner, that there were no spare lands for ETP.

At this point, government with the help of donors started construction of Tannery Park at Savar.
According to records, the government launched a project in 2003 to build a Leather Industrial
Park including ETP in Savar for an estimated cost of Tk 1.76 billion. Later, the cost was lifted to
10.79 billion.

Government came up with a plan to relocate the tannery at Savar and decided to set up ETP of
their own through Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) to provide
service to the tanneries. BSCIC has is trying to set the ETP for more than one decade and
finally placed an order to set up ETP in March 2012 but till date they could not operationalized
the ETP.

The under construction ETP is only for treatment of waste water but there is not option for
treatment of solid waste. Such a half treatment is not enough to keep the environment pollution
free and not acceptable to the buyers in western world.

In true sense, Savar tannery area is not ready for production due to inefficiency and corruption
but government sued the leather industries to shift to Savar.

The honorable High Court instructed the tanneries to shift to Savar from Hazaribagh in 2016. A
total of 158 tanneries were given land. Of them, 124 tanneries have already started their
operations. The authorities have also failed to hand over the deeds of the land pieces to a single
tanner till now, a report documents suggest.

Those tanneries have no choice but releasing the both solid and liquid waste in the nature what
they did in Hazaribagh area. BSCIC has shown many reasons of delay including requisition of
land and also admit the negligence.
Many along with the BSCIC showed their negligence as land requisition took a long time despite
the project's inception in 2003. BSCIC has recently claimed that they will launch in 'full-fledged'
ETP in December next 2019 only for waste water treatment. Moreover the work of its pre-
treatment dumping yard for waste water has not yet begun.

A daily newspaper reported that Dhaka University teacher said a 'small 'organization like BSCIC
may not have the capacity to build such a big industrial park. On the other hand, he added,
futuristic thinking is missing in building for central ETP as the plant has a capacity of refining
waste of 25 cubic meters.

This is not sufficient for the entre tannery park. Once the industrial park goes into operation, it
may produce waste of 38,000 cubic meters," the professor added. Moreover, there is no hope
for solid waste treatment plant.

The forced re-location and due to lack of ETP, the sector experienced the drastic fall of leather
export earnings and rawhide price during just passed Eid-ul-Azha is the outcome of the
government's failure of setting up an industrial park even after 16 years. The leather industry is
the country's second largest export commodity.

The estimated target of the government for exporting leather was set for $ 5 billion by 2021
amid a sharp decline in export. But according to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data,
Bangladesh earned $1.01 billion exporting leather, leather goods and leather footwear, the only
billion dollar export earner after the apparel goods, in the fiscal year 2018-19.

In the FY18, the export earnings from the leather sector was $1.08 billion and the sector saw
12% decline in export earnings. Of the total earnings from leather sector in FY19, leather
products earned $247.28 million, down by 26.58%. The earning was $336.8 million in the
previous year.

Processed leather exports also declined by 10% to $164.62 million against $183.1 million in the
same period a year ago. However, exports earning from the leather footwear posted a 7.48%
growth to $607.88 million, which was $565.6 million in the FY18.

According to report of a daily newspaper, tannery insiders said that they had purchased 45,000
rawhides after the previous Eid-ul-Azha. Half of them are still unsold. The total slaughtering of
this year is more than 1 crore. Leather industry's stakeholders said the prices of rawhide have
been low for the past three years.

As per the tradition, the tannery owners usually pay all outstanding dues of last to the rawhide
merchants during Eid-ul-Azha. They then buy the rawhide and supply to the tanners. The
tannery owners said, as the amount of export money dipped and they could not manage enough
loans from the banks, they failed to provide enough money to the merchants.

Bangladesh is not self-reliance in raw hides. During this Eid-ul-Azha, people were seen throwing
rawhides on the streets as they failed to get fair prices. Despite the fact, Bangladesh imported
processed leather worth nearly Tk 9.45 billion in fiscal 2018-19 from abroad. The shortage of
raw materials will be acute this year if the already operational tanneries go for full production.
Additionally the recognized foreign brands do not purchase goods made of Bangladeshi leather
since the process country's industrial park is not environment-friendly. So, some local footwear
manufacturers importing leather and make goods for export market.

Tehchang Leather Products Co Ltd, Taiwan was joint venture partner of Bay Tannery and
exporting leather products to European brands. Bay tannery and some other tanneries
proposed to set their own ETP at their own cost but government declined them the required
permission.

BSCIC most probably wanted to make profit for the nation from selling service from ETP.
Recently European brands buyers have cancelled their orders. The frustrated well-known
Taiwanese company has withdrawn their investment from Bay Tannery leaving the local partner
in bad position that in near future Bay Tannery will default their Bank loan.

Due to lack of ETP in the industrial park, no Bangladeshi Tannery has certification of the
Leather Working Group (LWG) certification, which makes it easier to sell goods to the global
buyers, is hard to come by for us due to the absence of a fully operational CETP. Few of the
Footwear industries became LWG-rated tannery due to use of imported raw hides.

LWG is a group since 2005 of brands, retailers, product manufacturers, leather manufacturers,
chemical suppliers and technical experts that have worked together to develop an
environmental stewardship protocol specifically for the leather manufacturing industry.

The LWG Environmental Protocol is made up of 18 sections, 11 of which are critical. These
protocols are (1) General Facility Details, (2) Operating Permits, (3) Tannery data, (4) Raw
Materials Traceability, (5) Environmental Management Systems, (6) Restricted Substances, (7)
Energy Consumption, (8) Water Usage, (9) Air &Noise Emissions, (10) Waste Management,
(11) Effluent Treatment, (12) Emergency Plans, (13) Housekeeping, (14) Manufacturing
Processes, (15) Beam house Processes, (16) Post Tanning Processes, (17) Finishing
Processes, (18) Complaints and Public Relations.

The weighting of the critical sections will automatically default to the lowest score achieved
within one of the sections, which is designed to encourage proficiency in environmental
performance across all critical areas of the audit. LWG does not issue compliance certificate or
membership without successful audit report.

The tanneries will not pass audit without treatment plant for both solid waste and waste water
and some other compliances. The use of raw leather will gradually decline with the enforcement
of compliances of Leather working Groups and reluctance of government and the tanneries.

The major challenge is compliance identical to compliance facing by garment sector is facing for
last few years. There was no choice to fulfill those compliances. Bangladesh should concentrate
on compliance issues rather than blaming others for low price of raw hides in the local market.

The writer is a legal economist. Email: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com.