The government has once again extended the deadline for eighth-time to relocate tanneries from the capital’s Hazaribagh area to the newly-constructed tannery village at Savar by this month. Earlier, the government had re-fixed the deadline until December 31 last year saying that this is the ‘final one’ and there will be no further extension. Industries minister Amir Hossain Amu on Sunday said that all the tannery factories will be relocated to Savar tannery village from the city’s Hazaribagh by February 28. “We have constructed a modern tannery village in Savar to protect the city dwellers from pollution. All the tanneries will be relocated by this month,” the industries minister said while distributing commercially important person (CIP) addressing cards among the important businessmen at a city hotel on Sunday. Earlier in October last year, the industries minister had said, “This is for the seventh time the deadline has been extended. It has been re-fixed until December 31 and there will be no further extension.” “The authority concerned has given a lot of time to factory owners to shift their tanneries, but they have failed to implement the instructions due to various problems’’ added Amu. On October 16, 2016, the minister had said the December deadline is final. But government failed to shift the tannery owners from Hazaribagh.On January 10, 2016, Amu had asked tannery owners to shift their units within 72 hours and directed the authorities to serve legal notices. Later, the authorities concerned extended the deadline to April 3 and then to April 30. The tannery owners asked for more time to relocate their factories, following which the authorities concerned set the deadline for June and later extended it again to August 30. They were finally asked to shift their factories before Eid-ul-Azha. “We won’t give any further chance to tannery owners. This time they must go to rgeir destination to Savar by this month as per minister’s set time,” Senior secretary to the ministry, Mosharrof Hossain Bhuiyan, told this correspondent. Only 35 out of 155 tanneries have been relocated to the newly built tannery village at Savar from Dhaka’s Hazaribagh, ahead of the December 30 shifting deadline set by the government.
