The government has directed the related agencies, including the contractor firm, to begin work within a week on setting up the central effluent treatment plant (CETP) at the Savar leather estate to ensure the relocation of the much-talked tannery industries. “Nobody will be spared if dilly-dally is noticed in complying the order,” Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu told a meeting on tannery relocation at the ministry yesterday. He urged the tanners to gear up activities for relocating the factories from Hazaribagh in the city to its outskirt Savar, some 15-kilometer away from the existing site. Regarding the delay of setting up the CETP at the leather zone, Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) Chairman Shyam Sunder Sikder said they would approve the design by next two days which was a major concern of the contractor company JLEPCL-DCL, a Chinese venture. A total of 82 factory owners submitted their layout plan and of them, 35 received approval so far. The meeting also called upon the tanners to start their factory relocation in line with the priority list. The tanners were assured of releasing the allocated fund of Tk250 crore as compensation after starting the relocation. After remaining suspended for a decade due to disagreements between the authorities and tannery owners over bearing the cost of the tannery relocation, the BSCIC, Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA) and Bangladesh Finished Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association (BFLGFEA) recently signed an agreement to expedite the work. The tanners said they would start factory relocation works within one month. Of them, primarily 25% of the total factories will be shifted and the rest will shifted gradually. Owing to the long delay, the tannery relocation cost now doubled to stand at Tk1,079 crore, a sharp increase from the first revised project proposal worth more than Tk550 crore taken in October 2007. The government, which initiated the tannery relocation move in 2003, deviated from its original plan and imposed the relocation expense on the owners under a loan agreement over 15 years, after the CETP is installed. The government signed an agreement with the CETP provider company in 2012 which was supposed to finish the work by September 17 of 2013 and it has also received another time extension for the work till January 06 of the year. SN Paul, deputy general manager of the leather estate said they would extend the time frame for CETP establishment and tannery relocation within a few days for the last time. More than 200 factories in Hazaribagh release several thousand liters of untreated and highly toxic liquid waste into the Buriganga River, posing a serious threat to the public health. The Department of Environment reported that some 22,000 cubic meters of raw and liquid waste from tannery units in Hazaribagh flow into the Buriganga, where the oxygen level is zero instead of the minimum six required for aquatic species. In addition to environmental hazards, Environment and Forest Minister Anwar Hossain Manju reminded the tanners that export of leather goods might be stopped in the Europe Union market from December this year unless the environment issue is not taken into account. - See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/regulation/2014/feb/25/start-setting-cetp-week#sthash.Q0LkgKKo.dpuf