VietNamNet Bridge - Around 460 establishments cause environmental pollution, with 40 of them causing serious levels of pollution in HCM City, according to the City's Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

The polluting establishments are mostly bleaching, dyeing, printing, textile, paper, food processing and waste recycling workshops.

Binh Tan district has many production workshops in residential quarters, which produce noise, bad odor, dust and smoke.

The Alley No 254 on Go Xoai Road of Binh Hung Hoa A Ward, for example, is just 100 meters long, but 10 production workshops are located there

Around 460 establishments cause environmental pollution, with 40 of them causing serious levels of pollution in HCM City

Ngo Xuan Thong, deputy chair of Binh Hung Hoa A Ward, said on Tuoi Tre that there are 500 scrap-iron dealers, plastics & material recycling and cloth printing workshops located in residential quarters.

These include 34 establishments which may cause pollution and they are going to be inspected by local authorities this year. 

Since the beginning of 2015, the local authorities have reported 40 environmental law violation cases to the district people’s committee and removed 33 establishments out of residential quarters. 

However, Thong admitted that it is difficult to relocate polluting establishments because other localities refuse to receive the establishments. 

Meanwhile, the owners of many production workshops refused to leave the current positions, saying that their workshops were set up a long time ago before the residential quarters were built.

Ha Noi Moi newspaper quoted some experts as reporting that relocating polluting workshops was a difficult task for the city’s authorities. In many cases, polluting production workshops have brought pollution from inner city to the suburbs.

The locals in Phu Huu Ward of district 9 once showed their strong protest against the  decision to remove the Thu Duc clinker grinding workshop belonging to the Ha Tien 1 Cement JSC to the locality.

Amid the strong protest, the HCMC People’s Committee then had to release the decision to reject the plan to remove the workshop to Phu Huu Ward, asking Ha Tien 1 to look for another place to move to.

The participants at a conference reviewing the implementation of the 2011-2015 plan on easing the environment pollution held in April heard that only two out of six goals of the plan were reached: 100 percent of people and businesses have been provided environmental information and 15/15 industrial zones and export processing zones have concentrated waste water treatment systems.

The other four goals on solid waste treatment, canal water quality control and others have been unattainable.

The districts of Binh Tan, Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon and 12 are the pollution ‘hot spots’.


CV