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Editorial

A question of governance

Has anything improved since Nimtoli chemical disaster?
30 October 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
Again, a fire broke out in a chemical warehouse on Thursday in Armanitola, this time with the difference that there were no casualties and it was put out by local people without fire brigade's help. This news coincided with an outrage expressed by the parliamentary standing committee over noncompliance by recalcitrant warehouse owners with the latest official deadline of September 30 to move to new locations. In June, a devastating fire attributable to the presence of chemical warehouse in a thickly populated residential area came as a rude jolt. We woke up to something that was there all the time. Over the years under the authorities' very nose a danger to life was raring to break out. It was looming over different neighbourhoods in old Dhaka -- thanks to combustible chemicals stored in the thick of residential blocks. The Nimtoli tragedy taking a toll of at least 121 people gave a severe jolt to the government as directives went out from it to relocate the chemical warehouses away from their present residential locations. But the sad fact is that despite a series of deadlines given to owners of warehouses, or more precisely, house owners who had rented out a portion of their building to chemical traders, the whole effort has evidently drawn a blank. The diagnosis was clear in the sense that building owners were tempted out with high rentals to store dangerous material that was clearly tabooed in residential areas. Neither could they be dissuaded nor legally proceeded against, including the chemical industry owners who had made a deal with the house owners or themselves made arrangements for storing dangerous chemicals in their own premises in densely populated areas. After nearly five months since Nimtoli disaster we come to know that there is an ambiguity as to whose responsibility it is to enforce the deadlines as well as to take legal action against those who failed to meet the directives. The environment secretary said in the relevant parliamentary committee meeting that it was the job of the industry ministry. A typical instance of buck-passing that has been the trademark of flawed governance characterised by an absence of clear-cut delineation of authorities. Industry ministry issues licence to set up an industry or a factory; to that extent, its role can be subject to scrutiny as to whether it has issued licence to any unauthorised enterprise. Maybe several of these warehouses are not registered at all. Shouldn't have there been a database? Yet, to the extent the environment is exposed to danger, obviously the department of environment (DoE), or for that matter the ministry has responsibility. People are interested in results, not excuses .

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