ETP issue
Mehroz Jalil, Dhaka Cantonment
The recent CTG directive to close down an industry if ETP (effluent treatment plant) is not installed before Oct 31 2007 will not bring any tangible results. Everything simply cannot be achieved by a shut-down threat & setting up deadlines. The CTG should realize the magnitude of this problem, before setting up the deadline. As per a DS article (dated May 14) out of 1800 industries in & around Dhaka requiring ETP, only 89 of them have it (i.e. less than 5% ). So the fact of the matter is 95% of them are without ETP. To expect that all these will have their own ETP within Oct 31 is definitely wishful thinking. The CTG should formulate a detailed action plan to deal with an issue of such magnitude. First of all, let us try to identify why we are in this mess with ETP (or rather lack of it). It would be wrong to solely blame the owners of industries. These industries were not set up without government permits & approval. So where was the environment ministry then? What role did they play, after passing the "Environment Conservation Act 1997"? How did these industries get their approval in the first place ? Unfortunately, like Rajuk & all other government monitoring bodies, most of these departments have forgotten what their actual job is. So what do we do about it now? First of all, we have to realize, that establishing ETP is a very expensive process (even a small scale one costs approx US$50,000). So definitely not all the industries can afford setting it up. Besides it's not just the money factor, but one needs sufficient land space also for proper ETP functioning, which many industries cannot manage now, even if they want to (as the adjacent plots have been occupied by others) The CTG should target the big players first, those companies which are discharging a huge quantity of effluents. So for these small units, the CTG should themselves take the initiative of setting up huge, functioning ETP (area based) & ask all these small units, to arrange discharging their wastes to these centralised ETP unit. Similar to water & sewerage bill, the govt. will take a monthly bill for treating such wastes (based on respective vol. discharge). This will prevent "eye wash" type ETPs (which many industries unfortunately have), and the possibility of not operating ETP (due to high operating costs) also gets eliminated. I am sure there are several NGOs which can be entrusted with setting up (& maintaining) art of facility ETP units & charge individual users on cost basis. The government would also need to allocate free land space for setting up such centralised ETP for each industrial zone ( ideal starting point could be the tanneries in Rayer Bazar/Zigatola area). I feel only then we can expect to have a cleaner & better environment in the future. It's not too late yet. But we urge the CTG to take the first step of bringing in a team of experts to formulate a constructive work plan in this area.
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