HCM City (VNA) – HCM City is cracking down on pollution, with the People’s Committee spelling out measures for waste control, after voters expressed anguish about the defiling of the Saigon River and the People’s Council calling for heeding the lessons of Formosa.
The government has ordered the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to step up monitoring of the quality of water in the city’s numerous canals and rivers and the quality of the seawater in Can Gio.
Many of them supply water for people’s daily use and agriculture and industry.
Information about the water quality must be uploaded on the department’s website and furnished to relevant agencies for them to inform water users, avoiding possible damages.
The administration has also ordered relevant agencies to establish a database on the quality of the water environment, check all direct and indirect sources and volumes of wastes and assess their impacts on water resources, especially those that pose a high risk of pollution.
It wants them to also create a database on the sources of discharge and publicise the information so that the public can monitor and supervise them.
The committee also instructed relevant agencies to create a mechanism to encourage political and social organisations and local communities to monitor discharge of wastes and immediately report violations to relevant agencies.
The department has been told to control waste discharge, especially from sources that discharge large volumes and those that pose a high risk of pollution.
The administration has instructed the Environment Police Division to make surprise checks of the sources of waste discharge that show signs of polluting, especially those that discharge large volumes and pose a high risk of pollution, and severely punish those violating environmental laws.-VNA