This has been five years since the fire at a chemical warehouse in Old Town of Dhaka that left at least 70 people dead in 2019, but the project to relocate the warehouses from the crowded residential neighbourhood made little headway. This has been about 14 years since the fire at Nimtali, a site only 2.5 kilometres off Chawkbazar, which was caused by flammable chemicals stored on the ground floor of a building and killed 123 people and injured 200 others. The Nimtali fire prompted the government, following expert opinions, to decide to relocate hazardous chemical depots and plastic factories from congested Old Town locations. The Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation took the initiative to relocate the chemical warehouses from residential areas, but the move remains unimplemented. In Old Town, there are roughly 2,000 chemical warehouses and shops. Of them, only two companies have so far agreed to relocate to a temporary relocation site. The remaining entities still operate from the crowded area, risking lives of the residents. Traders say that they were not interested in going to the temporary site at Shyampur as they believed that it would be a waste of investments as the authorities are yet to prepare a permanent relocation site. Fire incidents, with or without fatalities, meanwhile, continue to happen in the area.

In 2010, the Small and Cottage Industries Corporation drafted a plan on relocating chemical warehouses elsewhere, but it took eight years to finally take up the project and decided that the businesses would be shifted to Munshiganj by 2021. In 2020, the corporation approached the National Economic Council with a request to extend the project completion deadline till June 2022 but missed the extended deadline as well. Now, according to the project officials, only 61 per cent of the project work is complete and the project is scheduled to be completed in June 2024. It is not just the delay in relocation. There are also other pressing concerns. The city authorities have enlisted 1,924 chemical depots for relocation when in reality the number is much higher. A 2017 survey of the Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan reported 25,000 chemical shops and depots in Old Town, of which 15,000 were housed in residential buildings. Many building owners rented out their flats and basements, but they refused to admit that those warehouses were used to store hazardous chemicals. Urban planners insist that the recurring fire in Old Town of Dhaka is a case of regulatory failure as there is no designated authority to monitor chemical import and their use for industrial purposes.

The government must, therefore, need to make the relocation of hazardous chemical warehouses from Old Town of Dhaka a priority and complete the relocation with no further delay. Considering that death caused by fire in urban areas has become commonplace, the government needs to take fire safety issues seriously and address regulatory failures in this regard.