Savar: Residents of Savar are protesting against the new tannery estate built at public expense for the leather industry shifting out of the capital’s Hazaribagh, for polluting the environment in Harindhara area particularly, and posing serious risks to human and animal health.

Around noon on Saturday, a group of people, including teachers and students of different schools and madrasahs and workers, of Jhauchar, Harindhara and Kanarchar areas, formed a human chain in front of the central effluent treatment plant (CETP) of the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) at Harindhara demanding the establishment of environmentally-friendly tanneries.

Later, they brought out a procession chanting slogans and marched through different roads of the areas.

Talking to reporters, Shah Alam, member of ward no-9 of Tetuljhara Union Parishad, said huge amounts of toxic waste are released from the CETP, which is damaging the fertility of the crops in the area.

He claimed that cattle and fishes of Dhaleshwari River are being killed indiscriminately following the estate’s opening.

The school and college going students and pedestrians are facing problems with air pollution due to the odour emerging from the industrial estate built by the government, said Shah Alam.

The government initially took the three-year project in 2003 to set up the industrial park to relocate some 205 tanneries from Hazaribagh of the capital, Dhaka, considering health and environmental hazards as some 21,000 cubic metres of untreated toxic waste are released every day from the Hazaribagh tanneries into the Buriganga River.

It has allotted 155 plots among the tanneries at a 200-acre industrial estate in Savar and provided them Tk 250 crore as compensation for shifting their industrial units.