The Kolkata Leather Complex in Bantala on the city’s eastern fringes, created to address the effluent problem posed by tanneries, has yet to achieve that, even after over two decades.
That possibly led to the death of three workers on Sunday inside an underground sewer.
The Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) has stopped the work and a probe has been started.
A visit to the leather complex a day after the deaths revealed several manholes of an under-construction sewer system filled with dirty water to the brim.
There was sewage on the roads at many places across the leather complex, some of which had flooded roads leading to the tanneries.
The Calcutta Leather Complex Tanners Association has blamed the KMDA for causing damage to the existing sewer line causing leaks and filling up the new under-construction system with sewage.
The association also alleged that the agency appointed by the KMDA should have cleaned the underground sewer before allowing the three workers to go down.
The KMDA, on the other hand, blamed the tannery owners for discharging sewage from their units into the road, which flowed inside the under-construction drainage.
The deaths happened four days after the Supreme Court prohibited manual scavenging and manual sewer cleaning in six metros, including Calcutta.
The tanners’ association said on Monday that since February last year, they had been writing letters to the state government pointing out that during the construction of the new sewer system, the old effluent transportation system (ETS) and effluent pumping system (EPS) was getting damaged.
“Negligent digging of roadside earth creating trench on a large stretch of road for laying pipes has damaged existing catch pits of ETS and EPS, resulting overflow of effluent,” says the letter written on February 29, 2024 to the principal secretary of state government’s micro small medium enterprises & textiles department.
“The existing system, created more than two decades ago, is faulty and there have been leaks earlier. So, the state government had decided to install a new ETS,” said an office bearer of the tanners’ association.
“The KMDA has started digging roads and created manholes across the leather complex but almost none has been completed. Most of these manholes are lying open. Because of the damage to the old system through which the wastewater travels to the treatment plant, the sewage is entering the new pipelines,” he said.
“The filled-up manholes are visible everywhere but the agency did not clean the manhole with machines before letting the three workers go down. KMDA officials never discuss the issue with us despite several requests,” he said.
Firhad Hakim, Calcutta’s mayor, the state’s urban development minister and chairperson of the KMDA, said: “The tanneries discharge the effluent into the roads.”
Asked that the tannery owners said the construction of the new drainage network damaged the old network and resulted in leaks, Hakim said: “It is a lie.”
The minister, however, admitted that KMDA engineers should have ensured that the sewage logged on roads near the manhole where the three men died, should have been cleaned before anyone was allowed to go down for the construction work.
“I told KMDA people that sewage should have been cleaned before anyone went down the manhole. I have instructed them to see that no one goes down into a manhole if sewage is accumulated on the road,” Hakim added.
The KMDA is building 12km of new sewer lines, between 300mm and 600mm in diameter, in the Kolkata Leather Complex. The cost of the project, which started in February 2024, is ₹50 crore, said a KMDA official.
The tannery owners have raised questions about the delay in completing the project.
“I do not know the exact reason behind the delay, but the owners have filed multiple court cases against the state government. Besides, they did not hand over the pump houses to the government to run them,” said Hakim.
A KMDA official said there are six pump houses — pumping stations — inside the leather complex but these are inefficient and poorly run.
During a meeting with the state government about three months ago, the tanners association that runs the pump houses was asked to hand over its operation to the Sector VI Industrial Township Authority, a state government agency.
“They have yet to hand over its operations to the agency,” said the KMDA official.