The Nimtali fire incident has virtually fizzled out of public memory and authorities have failed to remove chemical units from residential areas and prevent fresh ones from mushrooming.
The fire that broke out on June 3, 2010 at Nimtali in the densely populated older part of Dhaka claimed 117 lives and injured hundreds.
It had immediately served as an eye-opener and turned into a national issue as the authorities formed task forces, mobile courts and probe committees to prevent the incident from ever repeating itself.
But three years on, chemical factories and warehouses are still being built in residential areas, most of them operating without valid licences and no objection certificates (NOC), making many areas in Old Dhaka highly vulnerable.
The task force that the government formed immediately after the fire comprised members of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, Rapid Action Batallion, police and district administration.
It conducted a number of drives in the city and discovered that there were about 518 factories and 73 warehouses in residential areas of which 47 warehouses did not have NOCs from the Department of Explosives.
The 88 mobile courts formed in different parts of Dhaka fined the warehouses Tk5.2m and gave a seven days deadline to relocate to safer non-residential areas.
Sources said some of the owners got away by paying fines while others filed cases against the task force for fining them. According to the fire service, six warehouses have relocated so far.
But Dhaka Tribune found that those warehouses had merely moved from one residential area to another.
The warehouse of Rita Chemical moved from Armanitola to Lalbagh, another residential area, while that of Plasticolor was moved from one house at Kayettuli to another house in the same locality.
Fire service officials admitted 90% of the capital’s chemical traders – 867 out of 994 – did not have valid licences issued by the fire service or the departments of narcotics and explosives.
Many chemical warehouses in Demra, Kotwali and Shyampur in Old Dhaka have been operating illegally, they said.
After the Nimtali incident, the industries ministry, and the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) asked the fire service to issue licences to chemical traders.
But the fire service authorities are reported to not have issued a single licence since because even though many factories have applied, none of them fulfilled their criteria.
“Most chemical factories are located in the heart of residential areas. Some of them are located on the ground floors of high-rise buildings. Our department also needs to have the entire floor plan for issuing a fire-safety licence,” said Brigadier General Ali Ahmed Khan, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defence.
The Department of Explosives said in Lalbagh and Sutrapur, 46 companies had the required licence to import and export corrosive chemicals, while 70 other companies could use those chemicals for producing other goods.
However, an official from the department said more than 2,000 illegal chemical companies run without NOC.
Mojibur Rahman Patwari, deputy director of the explosives department, said his office could barely keep a tab on chemical traders because there are only 14 inspectors.
On condition of anonymity, a member of the Bangladesh Chemical and Perfumery Merchant Association said nearly a thousand out of the 1,500 chemical companies were doing business illegally from the capital’s Mitford area alone, by paying bribes.
Abdus Salam, president of the Bangladesh Paint Dyes Chemical Merchant Association said around 10,000 people are employed in the chemical business in Dhaka.
These businesses are mainly located in the older parts of the city, he said.
“They have been doing business for generations, and most of them have their factories and warehouses located in their own residential buildings, in the middle of residential areas,” Salam said.
On April 20, 2011, the government formed two committees, consisting of representatives from the government, trade bodies, merchant associations, fire service, law enforcers and experts, to move the chemical factories, shops and warehouses from Old Dhaka.
The recommendation for forming the two committees came from a probe committee headed by Iqbal Khan Chowdhury, then additional secretary to the home ministry.
The committees, however, have not managed to start functioning in two years.
Iqbal Khan Chowdhury said the committee had submitted a 19-point recommendation based on discussions, directives of mobile courts, suggestions from the FBCCI and the industries ministry, for relocating the warehouses.
Keraniganj and Kamrangirchar in the capital’s outskirts were identified as ideal places for the warehouses to be relocated to. When asked why the committees had not yet started functioning, he said: “I don’t know about the situation, as I’m no longer with the home ministry.”
