Analysis
Right: The bird’s-eye view of the central effluent treatment plant at the Savar tannery cluster
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Rawhides at the tannery industrial estate in Savar
compliance certification in the seven years since its construction, and there are no moves to begin preparations for this.
The Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC), which set up Savar, and the Ministry of Industries, plus the Tannery Owners’ Association, have failed miserably to show the accountability required for this, and until proper new investments, initiatives and advisory services are provided, the Savar tanneries will not get LWG audit eligibility.
“The interim government should conduct a thorough investigation of the incompetence and irresponsible activities of the those involved in the tannery relocation project.”
The exports from the Bangladesh leather sector in the 2023-24 fiscal year amounted to $1.107bn, yet, understandably, foreign buyers – with the exception of China, as we shall later explain – have stopped importing leather from this tannery cluster. Buyers of Bangladeshi leather from the European Union, who have been doing business for the past three decades, have said that the tanneries must have the LWG’s environmental performance assessment certificate for leather production, otherwise the cluster’s crust finished leather and leather products will not be sold on the world market. In leather processing, nothing can be done that is harmful to the local environment, eco system, water body and workers, while the items produced from finished leather should not contain any harmful elements that can affect consumer health. To maintain the production of exportable leather
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footwear and leather products, large quantities of wet blue leather and finished leather have to be imported from LWG-certified foreign tanneries. As for China, more than 120 million square feet of wet blue and crust leather produced domestically every year is exported to the country at very low prices – at one-third the price of the world market – because no other buyer will import leather from the new tannery cluster. The price being paid does not match with the cost of production. Losses per square foot of crust leather have become the norm on every shipment to China.
Meanwhile, Chinese central effluent treatment plant (CETP) contractors are to blame for the compliance problems at the Savar tannery estate, due to the company involved being quite new to this type of work. One allegation is that the company’s tender, worth $71m, only included the CETP and not chrome management or a dumping yard, while an experienced Indian company had tendered $81m for the entire work, including the dumping yard and chrome management. If the second tender had been accepted, the Savar leather industrial estate might have avoided some of its compliance issues. The Ministry of Industries and the BSCIC have also not taken any initiative to build a dumping yard to stop the environmentally destructive practice of dumping of thousands of tons of tannery solid wastes in the open. Likewise, they are doing nothing to put chrome management systems in place to stop the release of used chrome liquor into the nearby Dhaleshwari River.
In all the countries where tanneries have been relocated, it’s usual for tannery owners’ associations to have appointed leather industry experts to take care of the process. In Bangladesh, two tanneries
Leather International /
www.leathermag.com
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