Furniture hub counts losses for metro rail gridlock
Furniture businesses along Begum Rokeya Sarani in the capital’s Mirpur have been hit hard by severe gridlocks stemming from the ongoing metro rail project.
The locality is home to some 600 furniture makers, 200 showrooms, semi and non-mechanised manufacturing units and dozens of timber sellers and sawmills.
Customers from around the city come to this furniture hub stretching from Agargaon to the Mirpur 10 roundabout seeking quality products in both branded showrooms and lesser known ones.
Businesses said they have lost four-fifths of their sales volume, prompting at least 10 showrooms to shut down while many others to reduce operations to cut costs.
Customers’ turnout in the zone has fallen sharply since the beginning of the construction in June 2016 although all the factories and shops were kept open the whole time.
Severe gridlock in the area puts off prospective customers from visiting the hundreds of furniture showrooms lining the road and drastically bringing down their sales. Photo: Prabir Das
Businesses in the area had seen a 69 percent fall in their earnings since the roads being narrowed down to make space for the mega project, according to the latest evaluation report of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED).
To cross the area, people now have to spend a much higher time compared to the period before the start of the project, according to the report.
According to IMED, it now takes 15 minutes for every passenger bus to pass every one kilometer whereas it should not take more than 10 minutes to reach Agargaon from Mirpur 10 roundabout, a distance of around 3.7 kilometers.
Omor Farukh, owner of Millennium Furniture at West Kazipara, said his monthly sales hovered between Tk 15 lakh to Tk 20 lakh in 2014 and 2015.
But the amount gradually came down to Tk 4 lakh since 2017, forcing him to close one of his two showrooms.
“Now I am trying to survive amidst losses as income from sales do not even meet expenses,” said Farukh, who hopes good times will come once the construction is complete.
The sales drop since 2017 has been drastic and continuous, as customers avoided the area to duck the standstill traffic, said Altaf Hossen, proprietor of Altaf Furniture, one of the biggest showrooms on the road.
Hossen’s monthly sales reduction has been staggering: from Tk 60 lakh to Tk 70 lakh in pre-2016 to a maximum of Tk 8 lakh at present.
Hatil, one of the largest brands in the country, also witnessed a 30 percent slump in sales.
“Many showrooms have closed down as they could not survive the losses,” said Salim H Rahman, managing director of Hatil and president of Bangladesh Furniture Shilpa Malik Samity. Rafiqul Islam Hiron, owner of Al Madina Timber, said his timber log business has been halved. “I am facing losses of around Tk 50,000 a month. I am struggling to pay off my bank loan,” he said.
Hiron has two timber mills in Mirpur with monthly average sales of around Tk 20 lakh, which has declined to Tk 4 lakh now, compelling him to close one of the two and go for layoffs. According to him, many have lost their jobs as it is tough for businesses to survive after counting losses for three consecutive years.
Around 54 percent work of the first phase of the Mass Rapid Transport Line-6 project (Uttara to Agargaon) was complete as of July 2019, according to the IMED report.
The first phase would be completed by December this year, said MAN Siddique, managing director of the state-owned Dhaka Mass Transit Company Ltd.
“We would free up most of the 11 metres the project had taken for the construction work in Mirpur area by the year’s end.”
Furniture business will flourish again in this area in the coming winter when all the temporary barriers will be removed, he said.
