Bangladesh’s leather factories under fire for child labor, pollution
A 10-year-old boy pulls a hide from pressing machine at a tannery in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Photo by Justin Kenny
Tanneries in Bangladesh that supply the leather for Western brands of purses and shoes are employing children as young as 14 and flooding waterways with pollutants, according to a report unveiled Friday by New York-based Transparentem to the Associated Press.
The report didn’t trace the leather to products sold by American and European companies, only to factories that make some of their goods.
Workers process hides at a tannery in Dhaka’s Hazaribagh district. Leather in Bangladesh has grown to a $1 billion per year industry. Photo by Justin Kenny
Bangladesh’s High Court ordered authorities to cut off electricity and water to the tanneries in mid-March. The South Asian country bans workers younger than 18.
The pollution is especially severe in the Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, which houses more than 150 tanneries. There, the air smells of rotten eggs and mounds of rotting hides litter the streets. Chemicals from the plants, along with human waste, flow into the Buriganga River, which supplies about 180,000 people with drinking water.
A creek outside a Dhaka tannery has banks covered in garbage and rotting animal hides. Photo by Justin Kenny
Syed Nasim Manzur, managing director of two Bangladeshi tanneries cited in the report, Apex Tannery Ltd. and Bay Tannery Ltd., called Hazaribagh “an environmental disaster” and said they plan to shut down operations there. But he also called the report a “smear campaign” and told the AP the tanneries do not hire child laborers.
A PBS NewsHour and Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting team of Justin Kenny and Larry C. Price visited six tanneries in Hazaribagh, where they found workers, some underage, without shoes and with little to no protective gear.
Workers rinse off after their jobs at a tannery. Photo by Justin Kenny
A worker in Dhaka’s Hazaribagh leather district sloshes in a chemical bath with animal hides. Photo by Justin Kenny
Watch the PBS NewsHour’s full report on Bangladesh’s tannery industry tonight.
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