VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Justice has found out from its surveys in the cities and provinces of Hanoi, HCM City, Nghe An, Da Nang, Can Tho and Hai Phong, that the loopholes in the legal framework on environment protection have led to the ineffective enforcement of the laws.

The surveys have pointed out that ministries, branches and local authorities have been late in implementing legal documents that guide the implementation of the laws, thus making laws unable to be valid in reality.

For example, the law on environment protection was promulgated in 2005, but only in December 2010, was the decree on specifying damages promulgated. This means that the law’s provisions could not be respected in the five years of waiting for the decree to come out.

The 1999 Criminal Code included a chapter stipulating 10 counts of environmental criminals. However, until 2009, the competent agencies still had not released any legal document guiding the investigation and judgment of the criminals.

The law that amends some provisions of the 1999 criminal code has taken effect since January 1, 2010. Meanwhile, the legal document guiding the investigation, prosecution and judgment of environmental criminals has not come out yet.

The lack of necessary regulations has put big difficulties for competent agencies when dealing with criminals.

Also according to the Ministry of Justice, local authorities believe that a lot of currently valid regulations need amendments, such as the regulations on emission, noise fees, and insurance policies on liability for damages for acts of causing environmental pollution.

The noteworthy thing is that the localities, where the surveys were conducted, did not pay much attention to provide law education to businesses, industrial zones, factories and craft villages, the subjects that could be the biggest potential environment law violators.

The number of cases of violating the laws on environment protection tends to increase. Projects’ investors make reports on possible impacts of the projects on the environment, but they do not follow the commitments written down in the commitments.

A lot of enterprises have waste treatment systems, but the works have just been used to show to government agencies when the agencies take inspection tours. Investors would promise everything to be able to obtain the investment licenses, but after that, they would break the promises, while state management agencies cannot supervise how investors fulfill their commitments.

Under the current regulations, state management agencies have to inform enterprises in advance about the inspection schedules. Therefore, enterprises have enough time to disguise their illegal discharging of untreated waste to the environment.

According to the Environment Police, there are more than 2790 craft villages, most of which are small villages where small scale household-run workshops with technologies run. The producers here do not have the high awareness of protecting the environment, while they mostly rely on the support from the State. That explains the pollution in craft villages has become alarmingly serious.

In dealing with medical waste, only 20 percent of hospitals and medical centers have standardized waste treatment systems, while the hazardous waste from other medical centers have been thrown to the environment, bringing big consequences to the community.

The Ministry of Justice has also pointed out a lot of problems in the imports and exports. From 2003 to September 2010, more than 3000 containers of waste docked Vietnamese ports which were found as unable to meet the requirements to be imported to Vietnam. The consignments included dioxin, mad cow’s bone powder or backward equipments used in 1960s. Since no one received the imports, the State had to spend big money to ruin the waste.

Source: Phap luat & Xa hoi