Seasonal traders of Chattogram city and 14 upazilas of the district had disposed of at least 1,50,000 pieces of rawhides of sacrificial animals as they could not sell those due to acute scarcity of buyers as well as extremely low price.
The price of the dumped rawhides is around Tk 10 crore, which is many times more in the international market. None of the wholesalers, traders or persons who sacrifice cattle have faced such perilous situation in the past.
The Chattogram City Corporation (CCC) cleaners collected around 1 lakh piece of disposed rawhides from roadsides and dumped those in the landfills. Around 50,000 such thrown-away rawhides were dumped from the 14 upazilas of the districts, CCC sources said.
Wholesalers of Chattogram said they will not sell hides to the tanners of Dhaka unless they pay their previous year’s dues. They are hoping that today’s (Sunday’s) meeting of the commerce ministry will find out a way on how the tanners will pay their dues of Tk 50 crore and how they will buy hides. They will sell hides only after acceptable decisions in this regard, or else they will store the hides and think of something alternative.
Wholesalers further said they could not purchase even 50 percent of rawhide as per their target since they were in acute scarcity of fund because of the tanners’ not paying the huge amount of dues.
Adviser of Chattogram rawhide traders’ association Md Muslem Uddin said, “The commerce ministry will hold a meeting with tannery industry stakeholders on Sunday. We’re waiting for the decisions of the meeting. After the meeting we’ll set our strategy.”
Shafiqul Mannan Siddiqui Jishu, chief of the CCC cleanliness division, said they had used some 70 trucks to clean around 1 lakh pieces of thrown-away rawhides from the city’s Bohoddarhat, Aturara Depot and Muradpur area, and dumped those in the landfills at Arefin Nagor of Bayezid Bostami Thana and Anandabazar of Halishohor. “I have never seen such perilous situation with rawhides in my life,” he said.