Home ›› 05 Aug 2022 ›› News
Once lantern, a kerosene lamp with a glass chimney, was a must in each household, is now almost on the brink of extinction as its use has become limited only to fishing boats.
Even the recent frequent load-shedding across the country has failed to bring back lantern in use. People prefer rechargeable lamps to lantern nowadays.
Even, some fishermen are also shifting to charger lights from hurricane lamps.
Imamganj, just next to Chawkbazar in Old Dhaka, was the wholesale market for hurricane lamps.
Dozens of wholesale shops were used to sale kerosene lamp. Now only two such shops were found there after an hour of search. Among those two, one had 16 lanterns while the other had only 6.
Hurricane lamp is a rare item now. “I collected 12 at least 20 days back. Six have still remained unsold. 10-15 years ago hundreds of hurricane lamps were sold from my shop every day,” Shawkat Hassan, proprietor of Alam Enterprise at Imamganj, told The Business Post.
He said he had to pass hectic day handling customers and representatives of hurricane lamp manufacturers.
Due to countrywide load-shedding, sale of rechargeable lamps has doubled in a month and no one is interested in lantern.
Hardware retailers buy hurricane very rarely and they sell those hurricane lamps to fishermen. It had gone to museum by the time if fishermen wouldn’t have bought it, said Shawkat.
However, fishermen are now also shifting to charger lamps instead of hurricane lamp.
Niranjan Rajbangshi, a fisherman hailing from Munshiganj, used to fish in Arial Beel during the wet season.
“We have torch. Now we are using two charger lights in our boat as one charger is able to cover only two hours. Once we used hurricane lamp as it could withstand wind but collecting kerosene and maintaining it is a hassle.”
However, boats fishing in the river and seas need hurricane lamps, he added.
As this correspondent talked to AK Trading Corporation, the sole supplier of hurricane lamps, as was suggested by Shawkat, Managing Director Al-Haj Abul Kalam, said now only two factories manufacture hurricane lamps - one at Savar of Dhaka and the other one in Bogura.
But they manufacture hurricane lamps along with other metal products. There is no factory in the country that only produce lantern, he said.
According to the shop owners and AK Trading, there were at least 12 hurricane lamp factories in Bangladesh. Now there are no factories dedicated to only manufacturing lanterns. All the factories are closed now.
A K trading is the second shop that retails hurricane lamps as no shop owner is interested to buy hurricane. Even being a supplier AK Trading could sell only eight lanterns last week.
Taj was the number one brand in the country. New Taj Metal King Private Limited used to produce the highest number of hurricane lamps. But they stopped production, Al-Haj Abul Kalam said.
“We collected 24 hurricane lamps but only eight could have been sold in eight days.” There has been no demand for lanterns over the last several years, a salesman of AK Trading informed.
In search of Taj factories this correspondent went to Kamrangirchar on the banks of Buriganga River in the Capital.
In Madbar Bazar area of Kamrangirchar a huge gate with two replicas of hurricane was found. As this correspondent knocked at the gate an old man of around 70 came out.
“I was a worker in this factory. But hurricane lamp production had stopped before the Covid-19. Now I am the only person who looks after the factory as gateman,” said the 70-year-old Ishak.
Hundreds of people were engaged in making hurricane lamps. Thousands of them were produced every day, Isahaq said.
The factory is now being used as a storeroom of building construction materials. Some equipment was still lying idle there as witnesses to the time gone by.
