The customs authorities in Chattogram have auctioned off 30,450 litres of hydrogen peroxide sitting idly at the port for four years, only a day after the same chemical agent fed into a fire that burned a private container depot to the ground, claimed 41 lives and injured scores of people.
Customs officials on Monday called a rather hasty auction for the said chemical agent, which was stored within 609 plastic barrels inside two containers at the port’s yard.
A Gazipur-based company, Keya Knit Composite Ltd, won the bid at Tk 5,20,000. The bidding started at Tk 2.38 million, according to Omar Farooq, the secretary to the Chittagong Port Authorities.
The company will be allowed to take those chemical agents, which have been kept near the port’s gate 4, from the port authority by paying advance income tax and VAT, reports bdnews24.com.
“On a regular basis, we ask Chattogram Customs Office to put items in the port up for auction. Following that trend, we issued a letter to them on Sunday to auction off these chemical agents that we have had at the port for the last four years,” he said.
Both the containers were kept separately from other materials for safety, Omar Farooq said.
Ali Reza Haider, a deputy commissioner of Chittagong Customs’ auction branch, said upon receiving the letter from the port authorities, the customs office acted quickly.
A huge fire broke out at the BM Container Depot in the district’s Sitakunda on Friday evening, which killed 41 people and injured more than 200 people.
The fire was believed to have spread rapidly due to hydrogen peroxide, stored in multiple containers at the depot.