A programme organised by HCM City’s
Environmental Protection Agency saw around 1.25 million people joining various
community-based environmental protection activities and several hundred
thousands more increasing their environmental awareness in the last five years.

“Environmental protection has become a duty of everybody,” Nguyen Van Hong,
deputy director of the city Department of Natural Resources and Environment,
told a conference held yesterday,
Jan 18,
to review the programme.

“We
co-operated with the Fatherland Front, women’s, farmers, youth, veterans, and
trade unions, the Union of Science and Technology Association and 24 districts
since we wanted to involve everybody in environmental protection.”

The city
Youth Union was possibly the key player in the campaign, helping clean up more
than 10,000 public places, collecting 27,000 tonnes of rubbish, and planting
nearly 120,000 trees.

Around
15,000 members of mass organisations were provided with basic awareness of the
environment, resolutions and laws passed in the country, and other related
issues.

Information about environmental protection campaigns was spread through songs,
plays and competitions, with some like Waste Recycle Day and keeping migrants’
houses clean being the most popular.

“Standards have been created for environmental protection and apply to all
households,” Ha Van Dung, deputy head of the city Environmental Protection
Agency, said.

“Environmental protection activities were encouraged and monitored through
co-operation with local authorities,” he said, adding the biggest hurdle faced
by the programme was the shortage of money.

“Since
most of our personnel were volunteers, it was hard to organise environmental
protection activities as a routine,” he added.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News