 |
Crucial Pollution Control Needed
The task of protecting Jiangsu Province's environment remains tough and time-consuming despite the progress that has been made, deputies to the province's people's congress have recently decided.
A questionnaire about the quality of the environment was distributed to citizens in the East China province. Roughly 40 per cent of the answers showed different degrees of dissatisfaction with living surroundings, arousing serious concerns and criticism from some delegates.
"This is not surprising if we take a close look at the causes of the problems,'' said a delegate at a recent meeting, called to evaluate the current state of the environment.
He said over the past 10 years or so, industry in the province had been developing at an unprecedented speed, but environmental protection measures were lagging far behind.
Although a series of environmental protection laws had been made, few of them were strictly observed, he said.
According to the law, when new factories or other manufacturing facilities are completed, they should be inspected and evaluated for both the quality of the building and the installation of anti-pollution devices; ``but most of the time, only the former requirement is carried out,'' said Cheng Yaohuan, an expert on environmental protection law.
Statistics indicate that of the 5,000 new projects completed in the past two years, less than half have met anti-pollution standards.
"It is the environmental protection departments at various levels that should be responsible for the current unsatisfactory situation, because so far they have not been efficient enough in supervising the implementation of the law,'' said Gong Lenian, another member of the evaluation team.
To a certain extent, the environmental supervision system was non-existent and all kinds of pollution had done great damage to people's health, he said.
"It is urgent for related departments to make concerted efforts to tackle the problem so as to improve environmental quality as soon as possible," said Gong.
In This Section
|