BEIJING, Feb. 27 -- Anti-pollution scrutiny in Beijing will be cranked up from Saturday, the environmental authority announced on Thursday.

The city's first local law on air pollution was passed in January and will take effect on Saturday. The capital's People's Congress is limiting and reducing major pollutants through yearly quotas for districts, counties and individual polluters, cutting coal use and controlling car emissions.

From March, the first week of every month is "environmental law enforcement week", when Beijing Environment Protection Bureau will tackle problems reported by the public, ranging from smokey coal boilers to industrial dumping.

The first operation will begin at zero hour on Saturday and target coal-fired boilers used for winter heating where excess emissions were found in 2013.

People in Beijing have just suffered one of the worst weeks of smog ever, only dispersed by a cold front which arrived on Wednesday evening.

The new regulation is widely anticipated as a test of the government's resolve to solve air pollution problems. It legislates penalties from hefty fines and imprisonments for polluters, and, for the first time, sets a ceiling on total emission of major pollutants. A previous guideline targeted only growth of emissions.