This is unacceptable that the government has yet to compensate families of the victims of the Chawkbazar fire that left 71 people dead in Old Town of Dhaka on February 20, 2019. Victim families, who feel abandoned, lament that the government is yet to fulfil its promise also of rehabilitating them. After the disaster, which turned out to be massive because of a chemical storage facility housed illegally in the residential building, the government promised to compensate the families and provide jobs for the dependents, but it has so far only provided a meagre sum for the burial or cremation of the deceased. Victim families also lament not having received justice in the case filed a day after the fire. The metropolitan sessions judges court framed charges against eight people on January 31, 2022, about a year after the charge sheet submission, but is yet to begin cross-examining the 167 witnesses. What is more ominous is that the government has failed to relocate chemical factories and storehouses from the densely populated Old Town despite repeated promises. Old Town residents and urban planners have demanded the relocation since an earlier fire at Nimtali on June 3, 2010 that left 123 people dead.

The Nimtali fire prompted the government to decide to relocate hazardous chemical depots and plastic factories from Old Town. In 2015, the government took up a project to relocate plastic factories to Keraniganj, but as the local people protested against the Plastic Industrial Park Project, the government shifted the project to Munshiganj. But it failed to acquire the 50 acres of land needed for the project, which was shifted once again to a place beside the Dhaka–Dohar road. In 2018, the government took up another project to relocate the chemical depots to Munshiganj, scheduled to be implemented by July 1, 2021. Amidst a slow project implementation, the Chawkbazar fire took place. After the fire, the government asked the chemical and plastic businesses to shift to Shyampur in Dhaka and Tongi in Gazipur until permanent places were ready, but to no avail. The Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation, which is implementing both the projects that have faced cost and time overruns, says that it will take at least three more years to complete the projects. Residents in Old Town, meanwhile, continue to live in a constant fear as the area still houses hundreds of chemical depots.

A complete relocation of the chemical warehouses is what is needed to ensure the safety of people living in panic in Old Town as they are exposed to ‘chemical bombs’ that can detonate at any time. The government must, therefore, relocate the hazardous chemical industries from Old Town at the earliest. The government must also compensate the families of the victims immediately and adequately and deliver justice to them.