Piles of thousands of unsold rawhides ruin on Chattogram streets

Seasonal traders in Chattogram have left on streets unsold rawhide of around 100,000 cattle following a steep price fall, according to an official.

Chattogram City Corporation workers started removing the rawhide from the streets of Aturar Depot, Muradpur and Bahaddarhat on Tuesday afternoon.

Wholesalers said most of them could not buy rawhide or had to offer meagre prices as they ran out of money due to unpaid bills from tanners in Dhaka.

The seasonal traders who were able to sell rawhide claimed they suffered huge losses after buying rawhide of cattle slaughtered on Eid-ul-Azha.

“We’ve removed four trucks of rawhide from Bahaddarhat. There appears to be 70 trucks more at Aturar Depot and Muradpur. Around 100,000 pieces of rawhide have been destroyed,” Mobarak Ali, said a ward councillor who has been appointed by the CCC as a monitor of cattle waste removal work.

The workers were transporting the abandoned rawhide to the CCC’s dumping ground at Bayezid Arefin Nagar.

Nazim Uddin, a seasonal trader who brought 200 pieces of rawhide from Fatikchharhi, said he paid Tk 300 for each and went door to door collect these, but the wholesalers were offering him Tk 50 apiece.

“No-one was eager to buy rawhide at even Tk 50 apiece in the afternoon. So I am leaving these on the street,” he said.

Another trader from the city’s Eidgah area said he invested half a million taka in rawhide trading during this Eid but was able to recover only Tk 300,000.

“I have abandoned 300 pieces as there was no buyer in the end,” he said.

Piles of thousands of abandoned rawhide started to form on the streets on Tuesday afternoon.

Blood from the piles littered the streets following rains and malodour of the rotten blood and rawhide covered the areas in the evening.

The CCC said it was applying bleaching powder to tackle the malodour and pollution.

The Chattogram Rawhide Merchant Cooperative Association targeted collection of 550,000 rawhides this Eid, but its leaders said they could achieve only 60 percent of the target by Tuesday evening.

Its President Abdul Kader believes rawhides of 10-15 percent cattle slaughtered during Eid will be destroyed this time.

Only 30 of the total 262 cattle merchants in Chattogram, including 112 members of the association, were able to buy rawhides this Eid as the tanners of Dhaka were yet to pay around Tk 500 million for rawhides sold previously, according to Kader.

He also thinks the government should have moved earlier to prevent the situation.

“The situation would not have been so bad if the government had announced the decision to allow rawhide export earlier and moved for discussion with the tanners for payment of the dues before Eid,” he said.