In an act of sheer audacity and defiance the owners of the Hazaribagh tanneries have skipped yet another deadline. This continues a pattern of the authorities setting one deadline after another and the owners flouting them with apparent impunity. If this is not capitulation against the powerful vested interest group, we fail to understand what it is? As a matter of fact, the government seems to have taken a policy of appeasement that is difficult to believe. Unfortunately in Bangladesh one learns to accept and expect the unexpected. Hence the apparent absence of a sense of outrage among the general public regarding the issue. And in the midst of it all, the Buriganga is dying a slow and excruciatingly painful death.
It must be admitted though that the tannery owners have continued to claim that infrastructure is not ready at Savar, where their industrial units are supposed to be relocated. If that is the case why the authorities, particularly the public representatives, are coming up with the answer? After all, they should be accountable to the people and the people have the right to know who is telling the truth. If what the owners who are refusing to relocate say is true then the obvious question that arises is why was the order to relocate given in the first place.
These cases of issuance of deadlines and ignoring them have become farcical to say the least. The relocation is a prerequisite for saving the lifeline of the capital, the Buriganga. Tanneries are the main polluters of the river's water. So relocation can no longer wait. The process has to be expedited in order to save the river and by implication the city itself.        
Experts have rightly been upbeat about the bright prospect of the leather industry in the country. With 90 per cent value addition, the industry stands to flourish like the apparel sector and earn enough foreign exchange to be ranked second to the latter. A sizeable employment generation in the higher category is also in the offing. What the tannery owners are seemingly failing to realize is that a business of improved version and environment is all set to catapult their position as producer and exporter several notches higher than their present status.
The foot-dragging and defiant tannery owners must not be given any chance. Instead they need to be strongly forced to go to the plots earmarked for them.