Chợ Lương pumping station, Yên Bắc District, Hà Nam Province is stinking. VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has announced plans to strengthen inspections of industrial production models with risks of environmental pollution and strictly handle violations in 2021.

A representative of the ministry said unexpected inspections would help promptly detect violations as businesses tend to try and avoid inspectors.  

In the southern province of Long An, environmental pollution in rural areas is getting more and more serious, according to local media, while the awareness of environmental protection of local people is limited. Indiscriminate littering is a problem, while waste collection, treatment and classification are not synchronised.

Wastewater from factories and enterprises has not been treated and has been discharged to rivers causing water pollution and impacting public health.

The ministry has inspected more than 3,000 industrial parks and production units, detected more than 1,300 violation cases and levied fines of VNĐ275 billion (US$11.9 million) over the last five years nationwide.

The ministry is also carrying out annual inspections on environmental protection at industrial parks and production units.

The revised Law on Environmental Protection 2020 makes the chairmen of district People's Committees and of communal People's Committees responsible for working with environmental inspectors and accelerating the local inspection process.

The law also states that environmental protection must be based on the rational use of resources, minimising waste generation and increasing reuse and recycling of waste to maximise the resource value of waste.

The law for the first time stipulates the principle of classifying daily-life solid waste generated from households into types: reusable or recyclable solid waste, food waste and other domestic solid waste.

The law also assigns provincial People's Committees to decide on specific classification for domestic solid waste in their locality and to encourage the separate classification of hazardous waste in daily-life solid waste generated from households.

The ministry has submitted to the Prime Minister a number of urgent solutions to strengthen solid waste management and solutions to prevent and reduce environmental pollution, focusing on the classification of waste at the source, applying advanced waste treatment technology and using waste as raw materials for production when possible.

The ministry will develop technical guidelines on the collection and classification of waste at the source suitable to each region.

The ministry will submit to the Prime Minister for approval a pilot programme on waste collection and classification in selected localities with different natural and socio-economic conditions with the goal of later spreading it nationwide. VNS