Uncertainties gripped tannery workers at Hazaribagh in the capital since Saturday when power, water and gas supply connections to the factories were snapped. Approximately 30,000 tannery workers are spending idle time at Hazaribagh due to repeated failure of the factory owners to relocate to the Tannery Industrial Park at Savar, 15 km from the capital and 12 km from Hazaribagh, a densely populated neighbourhood on the Buriganga River. Worried over the uncertainties the workers said that they even were not paid the wages for the last month. Rumours that many of the workers would lose their jobs, their wages and benefits might be slashed or many of the tannery factories might be laid off, increased the workers’ worries. Workers said they just did not know what they would do over the five to six months, the owners told them they would need to re-start production at Savar. Tannery owners said they would try to work out a mutually acceptable way out with the workers for the duration their factories would remain out of production. ‘How could I pay wages to 400 workers,’ asked the owner of an export oriented tannery factory. The workers should share the uncertainties facing the owners, said Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters’ Association chairman Mohiuddin Ahmed Mahin. During visits to Hazaribagh Tuesday, New Age found that the workers were spending idle hours in and outside their factories. Some of the owners were seen busy with shifting their factory machinery. In 1951, the tannery factories were established on a 60-acre area at Hazaribagh Ever since, Hazaribagh became one of the country’s busiest industrial areas surrounded by densely populated neighbourhoods. In 2001, the High Court Division ordered the government to shift the polluting tannery factories from Hazaribagh. Since 2005, the owners missed at least five deadlines to relocate their factories to Savar. Tannery Workers Union general secretary Abdul Malek said that the future of the workers would depend on the owners.‘We hope none will be fired,’ he said. He criticized the government for not setting up the dormitories for the 30,000 workers, school and playgrounds for their children, recreation centres or even a hospital at what government calls a modern Tannery Industrial Park.
